-------- Original Message --------
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From: Fet, Victor
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 12:48 AM
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Subject: RE: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKV-L] Powerful Kramler: Nabokov
decoded ...
>>....how did VN come to find stang...
>From his goalkeeping youth.
So far nobody noticed that there is a RUSSIAN "shtanga" (derived from
'der Stange'), which, among a number of exotic terms (such as barbell)
means a goalpost - or any metal post (either vertical or horizontal).
The term appears, for example, in "Drugie berega" (12.3) in football
context ("prislonivshis k levoi shtange vorot"); the same in "Speak,
memory" (13.4): ("leant my back against the left goalpost")
When the football hits it, the Russian soccer fans scream: "SHTANGA!!"
Also in Drugie berega (9.1) "shtanga" applies to four posts ('chetyre
shtangi') of an imported English "punching-ball".
I also should mention here an euphonious Russian word "shtangencirkul"
(from German Stangencirkel = slide calipers, beam compass). Hard to use
in Scrabble, though.
But then shtangencirkul has on it a "nonius", or "verniere", two other
native Russian words, very useful om Scrabble as well as shtanga...
Victor Fet