Books: Squishops & Jobbernowls

You ENGLISH WORDS (254 pp.)—John Moore—Lippincoft ($4.75).

If a man must go soppy about something—and no doubt a man must—what better object could there be for his daft, uncritical, wife-maddening, friend-alienating affection than the English language? John Moore, a Gloucestershire man who writes light novels (Dance and Skylark, September Moon), keeps pigs and calls himself an amateur of words, writes agreeably of his lifelong addiction. His most easily recognizable symptom is the logophile's tendency to open his dictionary, innocently intending to check the exact meaning of a word he intends to use to intimidate his publisher, and to become lost there until,...