Like spices in our recipes, language can liven up our senses. In his blurb to Willard R. Espy’s “An Almanac of Words at Play,” writer and once longtime host of television’s “Masterpiece Theater” Alistair Cooke tells readers: “To Willard Espy, the English language is what football is to Joe Namath, a golf ball to Arnold Palmer, the male of the species to Zza Zza Gabor: a wonderful object to manipulate, to flog, to coax and have a barrel of fun with.” Though “Words at Play” is regrettably out of print, in his marvelous comedic collection Espy created “a three ring circus of words: words clowning; words walking tightropes; words venturing their heads into the mouths of lions; words cleaning up after the elephants.” As Espy also pointed out in his Introduction, his was a “lifelong passion for words.” Whatever our political alliances, most of us would agree that America today …