JF wrote:

 

Charles, I think you're right to change your views on "zesty". If it's not ungracious of me to suggest a further change, the word doesn't sound schoolgirlish to me in the least.  I can't
offer either sound argument or clear evidence, but in my American experience it's not a conversational word for anyone (except maybe in irony).  I associate it more with literature
and advertising--so you still might have grounds to dislike it.

 

My revision of my remarks on “zesty” was intended as a would-be gracious concession in the interests of courteous debate. Questions of subjective taste, however, are notoriously difficult to resolve, as numerous proverbs attest. I was impressed by the immense collection of adjectives ending –y in Sherbo’s English Poetic Diction. Although some of these poetic favourites, so fashionable among poets in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, have entered the language, many of them now strike me as irresistibly comic. My subjective opinion of “zesty”  is still that it is a fairly horrible word, one I would not use in any verse composition of my own, and not one that I associate with literature, although I wouldn’t be too surprised to find it in advertising, used of, say, an after-shave, or one of those tingly-tasting sorts of sweets (candies). It doesn’t sound schoolgirlish to Jerry, but, as he says, he is an American: perhaps I should have said that to me it sounds rather like a humorous word used by an English schoolgirl with semi-literary aspirations. The gulf between European and American sensibilities seems to me daily to be growing wider than the Atlantic. Earlier I suggested that American taste is democratic, whereas European taste is elitist. But it is difficult to argue with those whose WMDs exceed those of the rest of the world combined. Also, one remembers that VN was writing verse composed by an American. I suppose that is one of the reasons he is photographed with an enormous Webster’s open in front of him. An unhappy image for  anyone addicted to the OED.

 

 

And JF quoted:

--- Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:

A. Bouazza wrote:
>> Kinbote: camouflage or coincidence? Kinboot, -bute, -bot. A wergeld or
>> man-boot paid by a homicide to the kin of the person slain.

Co-incidentally, thumbing through Wright’s Obsolete & Provincial English, 1858, I chanced upon “bote”, where its 2^nd  definition (of 3) is given as “help, remedy, salvation”. This confirms my note in my earlier post:  The “bot(e)” in “Kinbote” primarily means “remedy”. Specifically, it could mean “cure”, eg of an illness; or “penance/penalty”; eg a fine for some breach of the law. This, my instinctive understanding of the word’s meaning, derived from Swedish “bota”, to cure; and “böta”, to pay a fine. In Anglo-Germanic languages, the root appears to me also  to have religious over- or undertones, connected with saviour. Digging further, however, I found that in Wright the 8^th definition (of a total of 8) for “bot” was “a sword, a knife”. What a maestro that Willy Shakespeare was; even though estimable authorities may opine that “English poetry has few things better to offer than ‘Pale Fire’”, and “VN's adjectival precision and aptness have no rival.” I wonder if VN ever consulted Wright.

 

 

Piers Smith wrote:

 

Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@BOOTLE.BIZ> wrote: >We are left to ponder WHY poetry is so ‘memorable’ when each >unrolling word/phrase is presumably fresh, cliché-free, and >unexpected — and therefore packed with ‘information’ -- and >therefore more taxing to
memorize? Of course, one can mention >meter and rhyme as common mnemonic aids.

Literary critics, not often statisticians, refer to this as defamiliarisation (ostranenie). It is
precisely because a word/phrase is new that it is memorable. Nabokov's work, as it were, makes Shklovsky (and Bakhtin) familiar. 

Ancient poets, eg Homer, and less ancient ones, eg all Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen, and, I daresay all poets of similar eras, as well as right up to the end of the 18^th century,  were not in the least averse to employing time-honoured poetic formulae: in fact, this made their works all the easier to memorize. There is a standard lit-crit term for this: “oral-formulaic”. Metre, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, rhythms, repetition, contrast and the rest were, and are, absolutely standard aids for bards whose work is intended for oral delivery. I suppose a shift in approach accompanied the advance of literacy, so that poetry could be written as much for the eye as for the ear.  But many, many later poets still write for their readers to be able easily to retain their words by heart. And the eye can’t easily retain, eg, e.e.cummings. Some of his stuff, of course, is very memorable, but this doesn’t apply to his orthographic frolics. Imho.

 

Jansy Mello wrote:

 

I'm sure both S K-B and CHW remembered that in German, a poet is a "Dichter", while figuratively -  and in Freud -  "Verdichtung" indicates "condensation": an air-tight compression to keeps a substance, an idea or an image alive and fresh. 

 

Actually, a few years ago I happened to note that “Koestler once remarked that German dichten, to compose poetry, means ‘to compress, thicken, concentrate’. [However] The verb presumably really means merely to speak, cf Latin dictare, dicere. Or does ‘dight’ connote ‘tight’?”  Frankly, I think Koestler was mistaken in his etymology, and that the resemblance of “dichten” to “thicken” is accidental. Besides which, it only applies in modern German. Swedish “dikta”, compose,  bears little resemblance to Swedish “tjock”, thick or fat.

 

Charles