Alphabetter Juice

by Roy Blount, Jr.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  a · A · a

  abacus

  accentuation

  accompaniment

  acnestis

  ad hominy

  adulation

  adverb

  aid, marital

  airplane

  and

  arbitrary

  architect (the verb)

  awesome

  b · B · b

  back in the day

  bean

  bearless

  beauty, depth of

  belch

  bigth

  blab, blabber

  bless

  blob

  bloggerheads, at

  blurt

  body

  boo

  books, randomly readable

  boy

  bubble

  buckra

  bum

  but

  c · C · c

  celebrity

  ch

  chimera

  Chinese sense of time

  Chinese, would-be purification of

  clever

  clown

  consonant

  coot

  cotton

  cough

  crawfish, crayfish

  crustaceous

  d · D · d

  Daddy

  dangling modifier

  decapitate

  device, narrative, what would you call this one

  device, similar, but not quite the same

  Dionysian, Apollonian, blended, briefly

  discalced

  distance, the verb

  dubbed

  dwell

  e · E · e

  e, short, the new

  each other

  ear, writing for the

  -ed, -èd

  eel

  elephant

  enough

  errata

  ew

  expertise

  f · F · f

  fancy

  feted

  fewer/less

  first sentence

  flies

  flulike

  foil

  fond

  fool, e.g., Will Somers (or Sommers)

  form

  fox

  free speech

  frequent

  Frisian

  frog

  fudge

  full disclosure

  fuss

  future, the, caught for the moment

  fuzz

  g · G · g

  gag

  garden path phenomenon

  gender neutrality, absurd

  ghostwriting

  gikl

  gillie, girl

  glass

  Gmail?

  gnat

  Godwottery

  going global

  golf

  gollywaddles

  Google-logisms

  grammar/glamour

  granular

  growsome

  h · H · h

  Haskell, Eddie

  head

  headlines

  hiccup

  hippopotamus

  hopefully

  humble

  hunch

  hyphen

  i · I · i

  ingenuity

  “Is the pope fallible?,” alternatives to

  itch

  j · J · j

  Jack

  jejune

  joke, linguists’, which I don’t get either

  juice

  jump

  k · K · k

  kick

  kiss

  kludge

  knee

  knickers

  knickknack

  l · L · l

  laughing, in letters

  laughs, textual

  lawyer joke, earliest

  ling, lit, don’t invite ’em

  looks, poetic

  lunge

  -ly

  m · M · m

  mediablur

  me-fear

  memory, institutional

  metanarrative, pig and possum throwing

  me-time

  mimi

  mixed metaphor

  modernism/postmodernism

  mouse

  music

  n · N · n

  name, fictional, too often taken for granted

  names, common but relationship straining (I would imagine)

  names, funny

  names, good ones

  names, not so good

  names, unexpected

  negative, double

  nice

  nitty-gritty

  o · O · o

  oaf

  OED and me

  off-off rhymes

  Ojibwa/Chippewa/Anishanabe

  omen

  onesies

  ooze

  ouistiti

  outdo

  ox

  p · P · p

  pachyderm/pachysandra

  page turning

  pang

  peeve

  pet, peevish

  ping-pong

  plank

  poop-noddy, noddypoop

  portmanteau

  preemptive

  prescient

  prick

  prior to

  proposal, wording of, proper

  pshaw

  pu-

  puffery

  pun

  punctilious

  puppy

  purl

  q · Q · q

  Q-tip

  questions not to ask an author, with answers

  quip

  r · R · r

  racism

  rank

  recursion, excessive

  redundancy

  rhythm

  robinhood

  rumpsprung

  s · S · s

  -sh, sh-

  shrapnel

  sic

  sigh

  since

  slave

  slaver/slobber

  slip

  slush

  smithereens

  snazzy

  sneeze

  so

  sonicky

  spelling

  splotch

  sports talk

  sportswriting

  squelch

  sting

  strumpet

  subjunctive

  succinct

  such

  supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

  syllabus

  synesthesia

  t · T · t

  ta

  T and A

  tare

  tenrec

  their, them, they, the singular

  there

  thigh

  thong

  though, the lazy

  tight like that

  tit

  toadless

  touchy

  translation, of Mark Twain, into English

  tsk-tsk

  tut-tut

  tutu’s, the two

  Twain, Mark, little bits he never used

  typos, going with them

  u · U · u

  ukulelelike

  undertaker yarns, lost

  undulation

  upaya

  urge

  v · V · v

  vim

  vowel

  w · W · w

  wasp

  wavelet

  Weekley, Ernest

  well

  ,well,

  well-intentioned

  wheatear

  whistle

  whiz

  who, whom, tsk, tsk

  Wikipedia

  wisdom

 
wise, -wise

  wobble

  woe

  woomph

  writer’s block

  x · X · x

  Xanadu

  Xit

  X-ray

  xylophone

  y · Y · y

  y’all

  yare, yar

  ylid

  yo

  you

  you-all

  z · Z · z

  zeroth

  zest, zester

  zizz

  zolotnik

  zwischenzug

  Zydeco

  zythum

  Also by

  Acknowledgments

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  2JGw/OX

  ELSIE: What’s that, Daddy?

  FATHER: A cow.

  ELSIE: Why?

  —from a 1906 issue of Punch, quoted by Ernest Weekley as an epigraph to his book An Etymology of Modern English

  When we reflect that “sentence” means, literally, “a way of thinking” (Latin: sententia) and that it comes from the Latin sentire, to feel, we realize that the concepts of sentence and sentence structure are not merely grammatical or merely academic—not negligible in any sense. A sentence is both the opportunity and the limit of thought—what we have to think with, and what we have to think in. It is, moreover, a feelable thought, a thought that impresses its sense not just on our understanding, but on our hearing, our sense of rhythm and proportion. It is a pattern of felt sense.

  —Wendell Berry, “Standing by Words”

  Captain Smith … , happening to be taken Prisoner among the Indians, had leave granted him to send a Message to the Governor of the English Fort in James Town, about his Ransome; the Messenger being an Indian, was surpriz’d, when he came to the Governor, … for that the Governor could tell him all his Errand before he spoke one Word of it to him, and that he only had given him a piece of Paper: After which, when they let him know that the Paper which he had given the Governor had told him all the Business, then … Capt. Smith was a Deity and to be Worshipp’d, for that he had Power to make the Paper Speak.

  —Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the Original of Literature, 1726

  Introduction

  This book includes two disastrous wedding nights, several touches of romance (aside from the long-deferred union of scratch and itch), and lots of animal life (eels, crabs, elephants, flies), but it all springs from things going on among letters on a printed page.

  Where almost anything can happen. I’m reading a fascinating piece by Oliver Sacks in The New Yorker about a novelist who woke up one morning and couldn’t read, couldn’t recognize letters (see O), which makes my blood run cold to begin with, and I’m reading that people with certain ocular disorders “may be prone to visual hallucinations, and Dominic ffytche et al. estimate …”

  Oh my God, I’m having one. What the hell kind of phantasm is “ffytche et al.”?

  Then I go back, reread, and settle down. Some medical researcher’s name is Dominic ffytche. I’ve heard of such names. But I want to say to this man, “Dom. Please. I have name issues myself—Blount pronunced [sic] Blunt. That is no doubt one reason I’m so hipped on phonetics, that my own name is blatantly not spelled the way it’s pronounced, so I have to spend a great deal of my time arguing with people about how to pronounce my own damn name, which is a centuries-old English pronunciation and I am not about to change it. And I wouldn’t try to tell you, sir, that you should turn your y into an i and lose your e. All I ask of you is this: find it in your heart to capitalize one, at least, of your f’s. You don’t know what a start you gave me.”

  What do we have, if we don’t have letters? The police chief on The Simpsons advised people to “follow the Four A’s: Always Act According to the ABC’s.” There is more to life than that, but it’s a good start. This book, like its only slightly worse predecessor, Alphabet Juice, is not, except in irritable moments, a book of advice. It does urge you to dwell upon the literality and the physicality of language.

  Wait! Hold on a minute!

  Almost lost you, didn’t I? I had the TV reference nailed down. (Quick, here’s another one: remember in The Simpsons when the local library had a big neon sign outside that said, “We Have Books by People on TV”?)

  But then I drifted off into -ity words. Not nitty-gritty -ity words, like pity or Fitty (there, you young folks, there’s a hip-hop reference, and see blob), but longish … Excuse me, this damn phone …

  Ah, well. Where were we? These days, with so many demands on our—what?—our attention, it may seem hard to bring words into close focus. Hard and also retro. But, to paraphrase Gerard Manley Hopkins (see foil), there is a freshness deep down in words, and you never know when it’s going to flash out. Here’s a little teaser from this book’s entry on garden path phenomenon:

  … a review, by Janet Maslin in The New York Times, of a memoir by Barbara Walters:

  Ms. Walters … will acknowledge this much: She’s old enough to have had the daughter of one of the Three Stooges …

  WHAT? WHAT? Which one? Surely not Curly! …

  Yet another TV reference. And for you sports fans, how about the pleasures of the narrow-box-score phenomenon: Zmmn. DvMrp. (See vowel.)

  It’s a shame, isn’t it?, that people who use words in public don’t pay more granular attention to the words they use. On public radio I hear a concerned interviewee: “We—including the president—are not doing nearly enough to ensure that our children eat healthy food.”

  Hmm. We, including the president. Why not throw in Young Jeezy, the World Trade Organization, Stephen Hawking, the Phoenix Suns, Calista Flockhart, and the supermodel Gisele Bundchen? Don’t tell me any of them are doing enough. When something is not being done enough—and when isn’t something not?—it brings so many people together, conceptually. I’m thinking maybe this book could use an entry on the interviewee we. But then the interviewer says: “Do you think it’s because the president doesn’t want to open up that whole can of worms?”

  Here we go! Talking about children, right? And eating, right? Can of worms? Huh? My guess is, the interviewee will respond to that figure of speech in one of three perfectly natural ways:

  1. “Funny you should mention that. Studies show that a can of earthworms contains more nutrients, without the trans fat, than three cans of SpaghettiOs.”

  2. “Hmm. You may have hit on something. If someone would market high-fiber, sugar-free, organic school-lunch snacks convincingly resembling earthworms, it might go a long way toward solving this problem—anyway for boys.”

  3. “Ew.” (See succinct.)

  In fact the interviewee responds in none of those ways. She plows on ahead with her message. She doesn’t even chuckle, nor does the interviewer.

  People! We’re using figures of speech here! Figures of speech have specific words in them, and words have specific sounds in them, and attention must be paid. I don’t mean pissy, constrictive attention, I mean lip-smacking attention. But not sloppy lip smacking. That spoils it for others. (See Dionysian, Apollonian, blended, briefly.)

  There is a widespread tendency today, even on the part of people who write about English usage, to eschew finickiness. I’m sorry, but when it comes to wording, I intend to finick till the day I die. Because there’s kicks in it, as Louis Armstrong used to say. You can even enjoy slovenly syntax (see first sentence) if it conjures up an image. When the sign at a temporary warning light says, “Be Prepared to Stop When Flashing,” you can picture someone throwing open his or her raincoat while poised to desist. When you read in an obituary, “At the age of seven, his grandfather died,” you can imagine three extraordinarily compressed generations.

  In a Whole Foods store, I am waiting as my eat-it-there pizza slice is warmed. The pizza will disappoint (there is no more excuse for floppy, doughy pizza than there is for floppy, doughy sentences), but I don’t know that yet. My heart has been warmed, and lifted, by the sign next to where my slice is warm
ing:

  HAVE IT WARMED IN OUR HEARTHOVEN

  Heart-hoven! A Gerard Manley Hopkins word (hoven as an archaic past participle of heave), surely:

  Soul-flung, rump-sprung, heart-hoven I rise …

  Then I come back to earth. I lack the chops to fake even one line of Hopkins ( see foil). And what that Whole Foods sign means is hearth oven. But thanks to close reading, I have had a moment there, one that “saved some part of a day I had rued,” as Robert Frost wrote of snow shaken down on him by a crow.

  Recently I read a book that stated flatly, “Language is intrinsically neutral.” That is doctrine, I think, passed down to linguistics majors (I am a proud English major) so that they can look beyond words, which resist abstraction, toward notions of universal grammar, which thrive on abstraction. To me, calling language neutral is like (no, worse than) saying “Pizza’s pizza. Depends on who’s eating it and where and when, what it’s eaten with, how it’s marketed …” Okay, pizza does depend, to some extent, on such considerations. I’m not an absolutist. But there is such a thing as pizza that hits the spot. Such a thing as pizza that’s unusually interesting, on purpose. Such a thing as pizza that makes you say, “Now that’s pizza.” There is also such a thing as sorry-ass pizza. And to an undismissible extent, those such-a-things depend upon the pizza’s ingredients and how they’ve been assembled, baked, and slid from the oven. Pizza essences. Alphabet juice.

  Anatoly Liberman is a leading scholar of English etymology. “The more expressive human speech is,” he writes in Word Origins, and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone, “the more ‘echoic’ words it contains.” He adds:

  The criteria for calling a word echoic are not clearly defined. Grunt is an onomatopoeia. A grumpy person may be prone to growling and grousing, though even without gr- in his or her name such an individual would be equally obnoxious. Consider hump, which rhymes with grump and means “a fit of ill temper,” its soft sound texture notwithstanding. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology suggests that this sense of hump is rooted in the idea of humping the back in sulkiness. Whether such a conjecture deserves credence is a matter of opinion. Kipling had a similar explanation of the origin of the camel’s humps; his camel was irascible and spiteful.