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Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, T
By Blount
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Bibliographic Detail
Publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux
Publication date October 14, 2008
Pages 364
Binding Hardcover
Book category Adult Non-Fiction
ISBN-13 9780374103699
ISBN-10 0374103690
Dimensions 1.25 by 6.50 by 9.25 in.
Weight 1.35 lbs.
Availability§ Out of Print
Original list price $25.00
§As reported by publisher
Amazon.com says people who bought this book also bought:
Save Room for Pie | Alphabetter Juice | Roy Blount's Books of Southern Humor
Summaries and Reviews
Amazon.com description: Product Description:

Ali G: How many words does you know?

Noam Chomsky: Normally, humans, by maturity, have tens of thousands of them.

Ali G: What is some of 'em?

—Da Ali G Show
 
Did you know that both mammal and matter derive from baby talk? Have you noticed how wince makes you wince? Ever wonder why so many h-words have to do with breath?
 
Roy Blount Jr. certainly has, and after forty years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, except greeting cards, he still can’t get over his ABCs. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates the electricity, the juju, the sonic and kinetic energies, of letters and their combinations. Blount does not prescribe proper English. The franchise he claims is “over the counter.”

Three and a half centuries ago, Thomas Blount produced Blount’s Glossographia, the first dictionary to explore derivations of English words. This Blount’s Glossographia takes that pursuit to other levels, from Proto-Indo-European roots to your epiglottis. It rejects the standard linguistic notion that the connection between words and their meanings is “arbitrary.” Even the word arbitrary is shown to be no more arbitrary, at its root, than go-to guy or crackerjack. From sources as venerable as the OED (in which Blount finds an inconsistency, at whisk) and as fresh as Urbandictionary.com (to which Blount has contributed the number-one definition of alligator arm), and especially from the author’s own wide-ranging experience, Alphabet Juice derives an organic take on language that is unlike, and more fun than, any other.



Editions
Hardcover
Book cover for 9780374103699
 
The price comparison is for this edition
from Farrar Straus & Giroux (October 14, 2008)
9780374103699 | details & prices | 364 pages | 6.50 × 9.25 × 1.25 in. | 1.35 lbs | List price $25.00
About: Ali G: How many words does you know?
Paperback
Book cover for 9780374532048
 
from Farrar Straus & Giroux (September 29, 2009)
9780374532048 | details & prices | 364 pages | 5.50 × 8.00 × 1.25 in. | 0.75 lbs | List price $15.00
CD/Spoken Word
Book cover for 9781427204936
 
from St Martins Pr (October 14, 2008)
9781427204936 | details & prices | 5.25 × 5.75 × 0.75 in. | 0.32 lbs | List price $24.95
About: Ali G: How many words does you know?

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