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Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text
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Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text Hardcover - 2011

by Blount Jr., Roy


From the publisher

Fresh-squeezed Lexicology, with Twists
No man of letters savors the ABC's, or serves them up, like language-loving humorist Roy Blount Jr. His glossary, from "ad""hominy" to "zizz," ""is hearty, full bodied, and out to please discriminating palates coarse and fine. In 2008, he celebrated the gists, tangs, and energies of letters and their combinations in "Alphabet Juice," to wide acclaim. Now, "Alphabetter Juice." Which is "better." This book""is for anyone--novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian--who loves to get physical with words. What is the universal sign of disgust, "ew," doing in "beautiful" and "cutie"? Why is "toadless," but not "frogless," in the Oxford English Dictionary? How can the U. S. Supreme Court find relevance in "gollywoddles"? Might there be scientific evidence for the sonicky value of "hunch"? And why would someone not bother to spell correctly the very word he is trying to define on Urbandictionary.com?
Digging into how locutions evolve, and work, or fail, Blount""draws upon everything from "The Tempest" to "The Wire." He takes us to Iceland, for salmon-watching with a "girl gillie," and to Georgian England, where a distinguished etymologist bites off more of a "giantess" than he can chew. Jimmy Stewart appears, in connection with "kludge "and the bombing of Switzerland. Litigation over "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious "leads to a vintage werewolf movie; news of possum-tossing, to "metanarrative. "As Michael Dirda wrote in "The Washington Post Book World," "The immensely likeable Blount clearly possesses what was called in the Italian Renaissance 'sprezzatura, ' that rare and enviable ability to do even the most difficult things without breaking a sweat." "Alphabetter Juice" is brimming with sprezzatura. Have a taste.

Details

  • Title Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text
  • Author Blount Jr., Roy
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 304
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Sarah Crichton Books, New York
  • Date 2011-05
  • ISBN 9780374103705

About the author

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of twenty-one previous books, covering subjects from the Pittsburgh Steelers to Robert E. Lee to what dogs are thinking. He is a regular panelist on NPR's "Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!" and is a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel. Born in Indianapolis and raised in Decatur, Georgia, Blount now lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, the painter Joan Griswold.
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Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text
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Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text

by Roy Blount Jr

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0374103704
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