AtD translation: a-thrum with excitement

[Mark Kohut]

Ditto.....

A--and, I just want to add that in the organic history of word Creation in
English, many words which evolve to dropping the dash
between a and the rest or dropping the a altogether have happened.

Google a Shakespeare Concordance and see a long list of them, including
a-bed, a-sleep and others I've already forgotten.
P loves many olde words and roots, etc....

So, a linguistic playing-with homage to word roots as well, maybe.


On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 1:18 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> Great post,  Douglas!   Thanks.   (And welcome to pynchon-l.)
>
> Becky
>
> > On Mar 26, 2019, at 7:25 AM, Douglas Johnson <dmj at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mar 26, 2019, at 07:58, Mike Jing wrote:
> >
> >> P255.1-6 Chick greeted his shipmates, who were a-thrum with excitement
> >> What does "a-thrum" mean?
> >
> > "A-thrum" is Pynchon playing with language. English occasionally uses
> the prefix "a-" to mean "in such a condition" Some examples are "aflutter,"
> "aflame," and "acrawl."
> >
> > "Athrum" isn't a proper English word (in the sense of being found in the
> dictionary). Rather, "a-thrum" is the result of Pynchon combining the "a-"
> prefix with "thrum" in an inventive, playful manner. (In US English, it's
> not uncommon to hyphenate such a temporary compound rather than close it
> up.)
> >
> > In this case, "a-thrum" means (essentially) "thrumming." I'm curious how
> a translator would capture the wordplay here.
> >
> > --
> > Douglas Johnson
> > dmj at panix.com
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