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Fwd: Clarification re "tessellated"
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----- Forwarded message from bunsan@direcway.com -----
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 10:23:56 -0400
From: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
Reply-To: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
Subject: Clarification
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum 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.
Main Entry: lousy
Function: adjective
1:infested with lice
2 a :totally repulsive :CONTEMPTIBLE b:miserably poor or inferior <got
lousy grades> <felt lousy after dinner> c:amply supplied :REPLETE
<lousy with money>
3of silk :fuzzy and specked because of splitting of the fiber
-Sandy Drescher
On Saturday, April 30, 2005, at 09:53 AM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:
> I seem to have missed Sandy's original comment, 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
----- End forwarded message -----