Lover of American idioms will find book interesting

Never Enough Words: How Americans Invented Expressions as Ingenious, Ornery and Colorful as Themselves
by Jeffrey McQuain. Random House. 278 pages. $34.95.

     "Never Enough Words" is an abridged dictionary of slang disguised as a short-story collection. Though there's an alphabetical index to guide you back to your favorites, Jeffrey McQuain has organized the book according to what he considers American character traits, thematically grouping related words as he tells their stories.
     In a food-themed section of the "Conformity" chapter, McQuain explains that "Hold your potato," a 19th-century phrase meaning "Be patient," derived from the earlier expression "Hold your horses." Though this horse expression remains in use today, many potato phrases have fallen out of use: in the 1850s, "Tell it to the potatoes" was an expression of incredulity but, in the 1830s, "That's the tater" meant "That's the truth."
     McQuain's truths, however, are strictly PG. One might call "Never Enough Words" the edited-for-television version of J.E. Lighter's monumental "Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang." McQuain avoids those "usually considered vulgar" expressions in which Lighter delights.
     Despite the omission of words that a family newspaper wouldn't print, the book finds language colorful enough to keep the book interesting. The book makes a great snack for the lover of American idiom though the scholar may crave multivolume feasts by Lighter or H.L. Mencken.
     Whether airplane reading for the vacationing philologist or serious fun for the dedicated autodidact, McQuain's book delivers the pleasures of education. To quote poet Billy Collins' meditation on reading the encyclopedia, "No matter what the size of the aquarium of one's learning, another colored pebble can always be dropped in."
     "Never Enough Words" provides plenty of pebbles. And even a few potatoes.
    
PHIL NEL
     (Phil Nel is an adjunct professor of English at the College of Charleston.)