For the use of dictionaries and other extraneous materials

Keith McMullen schwitterz11 at netscape.net
Wed May 3 10:02:32 CDT 2006


[...] my  traveling  companion, Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary, 1970, defines, by the way, "Quassia"  as
derived from "Quassi," a Surinam Negro slave of the 18th century, 
who discovered a remedy for worms in white children. On the
other  hand,  none of my own coinages or reapplications appears
in this lexicon-- neither "iridule" (a mother-of-pearl cloudlet
in Pale Fire), nor "racemosa" (a kind of  bird  cherry),
nor  several  prosodie  terms such as "scud" and "tilt" (see my
Commentary to Eugene Onegin).

          -Nabokov




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