Ah, yes. Reminds me of Pancho Barnes (I mentioned her years ago as a possible role model for poor Hazel), who, at least in the movie of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, refers to rookie pilots as pudknockers and peckerwoods. Vocabulary the same, but we don't watch the same flicks!
Again I want to recommend to all and sundry the highly entertaining and enlightening biography of Pancho Barnes, entitled The Happy Bottom Riding Club. If only Hazel could have read a copy, things would have gone considerably differently. Sort of
like, if the telephone had been invented back then, Romeo and Juliet would not have ended so tragically. Sigh.
So being blue isn't the same as being crazy? tant pis!
Carolyn
p.s. Not that [pornographic] kind of happy bottom!
From: "stan@bootle.biz" <stan@BOOTLE.BIZ>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2013 6:04 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: "Wodnaggen" in PF
Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: "Wodnaggen" in PF
Carolyn: ‘wod/wood’ for ‘mad/furious’ survived beyond Anglo-Saxon into Chaucer’s Middle-English lexicon:
Lat us to the peple seme Suche as the world may of us deme That wommen loven us for wod.
No plausible connection with ‘woad’ (the blue dye).
Possible connection, via ‘peckerwod’ with current US porno-speak.
‘Getting/keeping wood’ = Achieving/maintaining an erection during prolonged XXX-rated film-making.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 13/11/2013 05:32, "Carolyn KUNIN" <chaiselongue@ATT.NET> wrote:
Dear M. Courturier,
Priscilla Meyers has done our linguistic homework for us. She has analyzed Zemblan into its Russian and Germanic roots in her book on Pale Fire primarily*, Find what the Sailor has Hidden.
On page 96 she says that Kinbote describes Judge Goldsworth's house as being of the wodnaggen type. Wod (any relation to woad I wonder) is an anglo-saxon word meaning mad or frenzied. Gnagan (ancestor to our verb to nag) means to gnaw or fret.
A very useful book, indeed.
Carolyn
*and secondarily on Lolita
From: "NABOKV-L, English" <nabokv-l@HOLYCROSS.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 7:49 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: "Wodnaggen" in PF
Dear List,
Neither Zimmer nor Boyd offered an annotation for the word "wodnaggen"
in Pale Fire (note to lines 47-48). Has anybody come up with an explanation
that I have missed.
Thank you for your help.
Maurice Couturier
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communications are read by both co-editors.