No classicist and a lousy [definition 2b] speller of English to boot,
I consulted Webster On-Line to be sure of the word's meaning and was
offered the additional  'L'. This was passed on to Jansy directly.
The "find" of the spelling in Nabokov is Jansy's alone.


<fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger>Main Entry: <bold>lousy

</bold>Function: <italic>adjective

</italic><bold>1:</bold>infested with lice

<bold>2 a :</bold>totally repulsive
<bold>:</bold></bigger><bold><color><param>0000,0000,9999</param>CONTEMPTIBLE
</color><bigger>b:</bigger></bold><bigger>miserably poor or inferior
<<got <italic>lousy </italic>grades>  <<felt <italic>lousy
</italic>after dinner> <bold>c:</bold>amply supplied
<bold>:</bold></bigger><bold><color><param>0000,0000,9999</param>REPLETE
</color></bold><bigger><<<italic>lousy </italic>with money>

<bold>3</bold><italic>of silk </italic><bold>:</bold>fuzzy and specked
because of splitting of the fiber

</bigger></fontfamily>

-Sandy Drescher


On Saturday, April 30, 2005, at 09:53  AM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:


<excerpt><underline>I seem to have missed Sandy's original
comment,</underline> but I think the

single 'l' was a very natural mistake on Nabokov's part: the

correct spelling looks odd. The reason the second 'l' is there

has not so much to do with the derivation from the participle --

in fact I question whether it is a participle -- but with the

way the word was formed in Latin. The first 'l' is actually the

'r' in the root word tessera (itself a Greek loan-word). To form

the diminutive, '-ula' would be added, giving 'tesserula.' The

unstressed interconsonantal 'u' drops out and the 'r' is

assimilated to an 'l.' The adjective tessellatus (used already

by Suetonius) in my view was formed from that, because as far as

I know there is no classical Latin verb related to 'tessera';

there may well have been a Late Latin one, but I suspect it was

a back-formation from the adjective.


At any rate, in order to spell "tessellated" correctly without

consulting a dictionary, one would have to have a pretty good

grasp of its etymology and the rules governing word formation

and consonantal shifts in Latin. And for an inveterate

dictionary-consulter Nabokov was not always a perfect speller --

in Pale Fire both 'triptych' and 'chthonic'-- two words that are

hard to spell correctly without keeping the Greek roots in mind

-- are misspelled (see discussion at

http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0104&L=nabokv-l&P=R638).

Whether any of these errors were picked up by Nabokov's

publishers' copyeditors, and if so whether he ignored the

corrections, is another matter. One would think that even his

very limited definition of an editor as a mere proofreader

(Strong Opinions 95) would cover things like this, but maybe not.


Mary</excerpt>