ENTERTAINMENT

If everybody's first English teacher were Roy Blount Jr., we might still be trillions in debt, but we would be so deeply in love with words and their magic, even words like "credit-default swap," that we'd hardly notice. In other words, we'd be happily wired on alphabet juice, which Mr. Blount (Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South and 20 other books) defines as "the quirky but venerable squiggles which through centuries of knockabout breeding and intimate contact with the human body have absorbed the uncanny power to carry the ring of truth."

And ring those squiggles do under Mr. Blount's orchestration. Starting with the letter A and meandering on to "Zyzzyva," Alphabet Juice is the ultimate browser's dictionary, a glorious smorgasbord set forth by a delightfully arbitrary chef. Skipping around as he encourages readers to do, here are a few nibbles from the feast:

Babble, Babel. It sure looks as if the Biblical capital of linguistic confusion should be a blood relative of the cute-infant sound, but it ain't so, says Mr. Blount, who, by the way, defends "ain't" as a useful if "promiscuous" stand-in. He asks where pop music would be without "ain't." Try "It Isn't Me, Babe."

Disinterested, Uninterested. Though he celebrates the flexibility and inventiveness of English, Mr. Blount can crack the whip when he likes, and he has his limits. "I do hope you realize that every time you use 'disinterested' to mean 'uninterested,' an angel dies ... " he writes. (I wish he had been equally tough on the criminal misuse of "frankly" by anyone speaking to a mass audience, as in "Frankly," the senator told ABC News, "my opponent is clueless." )

Google. Mr. Blount explains that the company-name-turned-ubiquitous verb springs from a misspelling of the mega-number "googol," but did you know that "googol" was coined in 1938 by 9-year old Milton Sirotta at the request of his mathematician uncle? From there it's but a Blountian synapse-leap to Barney Google of cartoon fame, the baby-talk "goo-goo," and, somehow, the cricket term "googly."

Hopefully. Bucking the tide, Mr. Blount carries on the good fight against this bête noir. Alas, he's thrown in the towel on "beg the question," which for centuries meant, "to assume as proven what is to be proven," but today seems to mean "inviting another obvious question." Give it up, says Mr. Blount.

Meme. Our linguistic sherpa tackles the newer locutions. See also meta-, hater, cherry-picking, etc.

O. Mr. Blount praises all 26 letters, but only O gets its own ode: "You're just inside the door of home / You calm us down when we say om."

Sonicky. Not a pitch for a fast food chain but one of Mr. Blount's own neologisms. Sonicky words don't imitate a sound (i.e., boom), but they do "sensuously evoke the essence of the word." Examples: queasy, rickety and zest.

Zyzzyva, by the way, is both a type of weevil and the sound it makes, and that's not the strangest thing you'll learn from this wise and wonderful book.

Chris Tucker (www.ctucker.wordpress.com) is a Dallas-based writer, literary consultant and commentator for KERA-FM (90.1).

Alphabet Juice

The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words,

and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones,

Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics

and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage

Foul and Savory

and Giroux, $25)

Roy Blount Jr. is among the authors appearing Saturday and Sunday at the Texas Book Festival in Austin. For a complete schedule and for live reports during the event, visit the Texas Pages blog, GuideLive. com/texaspages.