Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0020903, Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:45:56 -0400

Subject
THOUGHTS: Nates and ensellure
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Date
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Tom Rymour writes:

Dear All,

What about 'ensellure'? I forget if it was the small of Lolita's back,
or
Ada's. Not a prosaic Saxon word, but one of those enticing, euphonious,
filthy, fancy, foreign, French mots justes which have been infiltrating
our plain speech since 1066.

Hugs and kisses,

Tom (Rymour)

> Thanks, James. Nick Antosca¹s first quotation from Lolita includes
that
> mood-killing technical word, NATES, which, unsurprisingly, 12-year-old

> Nick
> has to look up. Alas, NATES still rhymes with GRATES in my affronted
> Anglophonic soul. Unless you pronounce NATES as \nartays\, the Latin
> plural
> of NATIS, which is, presumably. just one singular,
turn-the-other-cheek
> bum.
>
> If the use of NATES is to suggest a surgical lexicon/mindset for
Humbert,
> why does VN use the everyday English
> SHOULDER-BLADES in the same passage, rather than the matching
> cold-medical
> OMOPLATES (found elsewhere. e.g., in The Original of Laura, about
which
> Jansy and I have had several exchanges)?
>
> Nick and I, and most honest males, see Lolita with a sweet, young,
> out-of-bounds ass. Her nates belong with her glutæus maximus (suitably
> pluralized) on some Gray¹s (not Grey¹s) Anatomy Dissection Table.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle.

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