I think the verb ‘invent’ needs clarification in the context of forming words as opposed to building material gadgets or devising production processes. In the latter cases, there are established historical and legal tests to establish ‘priority’ and support the claim of ‘invention.’ The oft-tangled, trans-national Patent process reveals the common complexities of proving genuinely ‘independent’ innovation, affecting many technological breakthroughs (telephony, radio, computers, ...) Both national pride and hard cash are involved, tempting some deliberate distortion of the claims. Yet, FACTUAL questions can be posed which are essentially ‘answerable!’: such as ‘When did X invent and publicly demonstrate gadget A?’ and ‘Was X’s invention before or after or independent of Y’s demonstration of A on such-a-date?’
Claimed ‘neologisms,’ such as VN’s ‘nymphet,’ lack a comparable verification trail. New words can emerge by simply applying existing transformational rules embedded in a language over unmapped (indeed, un-mappable) ages. Thus prefixes and suffixes abound in all I.E. Languages, poised and waiting, as it were, to be attached with predictable effect on the root, long before being blessed by a dictionary entry or citation.
In particular, the many rules for forming diminutives include adding the suffix ‘-et’ and ‘-ette.’ So what VN ‘invented’ was not ‘nymphet,’ the diminutive of ‘nympth,’ but, as he clearly acknowledges in the cited interview, the first user of the ‘pre-existing’ noun ‘nymphet’ with an original, ‘refined/specific’ definition (see Lolita for age and physical attributes.)
I can see that this may be a puzzle to those who rely ‘religiously’ on dictionaries for (i) exhaustive definitions (ii) eternal notions of ‘correct usage,’ and (ii) proofs of existence.
But it should be clear that no dictionary can cope with inevitable semantic shifts, nor define all the valid English derivatives of the root (or atomic) noun. I’ve no idea if the following have yet been used: nymphish, nymphity, nymphetize, nymphetisation, denympth, nymphological, ... Modern electronic word-sweepers will eventually pick up these words, and more, and lexicographers will make human-frail decisions as to their ‘right-to-live.’
The base-word ‘nympth’ itself has attracted dozens of meanings since its Latin-via-Greek origins, as any decent dictionary will attest. Etymology (e.g., numpha = bride) offers only the vaguest hint to the current semantic spread, reminding us of linguistic’s most persistent fallacy: meanings depend on origins rather than from actual observed usage.
Summary: Nabokov was justified in claiming to be the first to use ‘nymphet’ as defined in his novel Lolita. But, as Maurice Couturier notes, this confers no ‘monopoly’ on the word itself, and can never preclude other valid usages of ‘nymphet’ and ‘nymphette’ based on the diminutive suffixes.
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 19/01/2011 18:12, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Maurice Couturier: "While writing my new book ("Nabokov, ou la tentation française"; it hopefully will come out this year) in which I study Nabokov's brand of French, his many stays in France, the circumstances in which "Lolita" was published and censored in France, Nabokov's strong opinions about French authors from Ronsard to Robbe-Grillet, and the reception of his works in France, I came across a very interesting interview he gave to "L'Express" in 1959 which I would like to share, in my translation, with the Nabokovians..."
JM: A few months ago I came across an information related to Ronsard (it was posted in the Nab-L, Oct. 2010, #110) in which Maurice Couturier affirms that Nabokov may not have been familiar with Ronsard's "chanson," where the term "nymphette" appears*.
In the interesting interview he generously translated and shared with the List we find that Nabokov was familiar with "a sonnet" by Ronsard, but that he considered that it was not a genuine "nymphetic" coinage, as it was in the case of his word in connection to the particular kind of "nymphet" he describes in "Lolita". I wonder if Couturier could expand on his point about Ronsard's priority in the use of "nymphette," if Nabokov's claim ( "an infrigement of my rights") is justified or not.
extracted item from the interview given to L’Express in Paris - 1959 and translated by Maurice Couturier:
- Did you invent the word “nymphet”?
V. Nabokov: Yes, I did. There was already the word “nymph”. And Ronsard, who likes Latin diminutives, used the word “nymphette” in a sonnet. But not in the sense I used it. For him it was a nymph who was gentle....
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* cf. Maurice Couturier -« The Distinguished Writer vs the Child », Cycnos, Volume 10 n°1, mis en ligne le 13 juin 2008, URL : http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1287 <http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1287> . " A pity, by the way, that Mademoiselle did not read all of Ronsard's poetry to him. He would never have claimed, as he did in a letter, that he had invented the French word "nymphette" : "I am informed that a French motion picture company is about to make a picture entitled 'The Nymphets' ('Les Nymphettes'). The use of this title is an infringement of my rights since this term was invented by me for the main character in my novel Lolita and has now become completely synonymous with Lolita in the minds of readers throughout the world."17 The French word appeared in the late fifteenth century and was later used by Ronsard in one of his "Chansons"[...] The opening lines could be translated as follows: "Little gamesome nymph,/ Nymphet I idolize." It is always tricky to claim one's rights upon a word, especially a foreign word which is easily derived from a very common one. Nabokov knew his Ronsard, of course, and he quoted him in Lolita, but apparently he did not know this "chanson" which was set to music by Clément Jannequin. It is thanks to him, though, that the word got a new lease on life in French in the very special meaning we know. "