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praedormitary adjective of or relating to the twilight state of semi-consciousness immediately preceding sleep.
ORIGIN ? I found this word in Speak, Memory by Nabokov. It gets 4 Google-hits, all from said memoir. I prepared the definition myself, based on hypnopompic: hypnopompic adjective of or relating to the twilight state of semi-consciousness immediately preceding waking up.
ORIGIN from Greek hupnos "sleep" and pompe "sending away". Is it in a dictionary? What might the origin of this wonderful word be?
Last edited by Hydra; 08/03/07 05:23 AM.
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you'll find that the usual contrast to hypnopompic is hypnogogic (also hypnagogic), thus obviating any need for this word.
edit: dormitary is an obsolete term for sleep-inducing; cf. dormitive -- so pre- and post- could follow, perforce.
Last edited by tsuwm; 08/03/07 06:16 AM.
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So do you think Nabokov just made it up?
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why not? someone has to do these things!
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Is it in a dictionary? What might the origin of this wonderful word be?
You want to give us the context from the Nabokov?
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So do you think Nabokov just made it up?Yes. He was a master of language. He is one of the few authors I can think of who is (rightly) famous for works that he wrote in two different languages: i.e., Russian and English. He is credited with having coined the word nymphet.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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You want to give us the context from the Nabokov? Well, it's defininitely not a hapax legomenon... I just came across it in a short story, also by Nabokov. Here's your context: Just before falling sleep, I often became aware of a one-sided conversation going on in an adjacent section of my mind, quite independent from the actual trend of my thoughts. It is a neutral, detached, anonymous voice, which I catch saying words of no importance to me whatever—an English or a Russian sentence, not even addressed to me, and so trivial that I hardly dare give samples, lest the flatness I wish to convey be marred by a molehill of sense. This silly phenomenon seems to be the auditory counterpart of certain praedormitary visions, which I also know well.
—Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, p.28. Presently he sleeps, he sleeps, and, since, on his convict's cot, not a single praedormitory thought troubles him ...
—Tyrants Destroyed, ch. 14.
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