Ada, or Ardor ~Vladmir Nabokov

emilybee commented on the list ada-or-ardor-vladmir-nabokov

What do you think VN means by googled on page 86 of the 1990 Vintage International Edition? "Ada mounted it (a hot bicycle), uttered a yelp of pain, almost fell off, googled, recovered--and the rear tire burst with a cosmic bang."

January 20, 2012

swimsuitissue commented on the list ada-or-ardor-vladmir-nabokov

emilybee I imagined Ada googled like googly eyes google: a goofy and round fumbling.

January 20, 2012

rolig commented on the list ada-or-ardor-vladmir-nabokov

Well, since it's Nabokov, there could well be a Slavic solution. In Slovene the verb gugati means "to rock"; a gugalnik is a rocking chair, while a gugalnica is a swing. The Russian word for "to rock or swing" is different (качаться / kachat'sya), but I wondered anyway if there was a cognate. It turns out that Dahl's mid-19th-c. dictionary includes the word гугала / gugala (from a northern Russian dialect) which means "swing" (noun) and, indeed, the verb гугаться / gugat'sya, "to swing". So I would suggest that Nabokov playfully Englished this as "google", meaning something like "sway back and forth".

January 21, 2012