Word: nape
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...with good reason. Sinfully rich novels like The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Pale Fire and even that great American road novel Lolita are cleverly defended against casual entry. Nabokov's short fictions, on the other hand, are thresholds to his themes and some of the most nape-tingling prose and devilish inventions in 20th century letters. So better late than never, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (Knopf; 659 pages; $35) is a welcome edition to the shelves of old admirers and a chance for entry-level fans to sample the author's delights...
...didn't enjoy killing mice: "It was gross. you could either gas them to death, or take them by the tail and the nape of the neck and then twist...
...shame. Mosquitoes have range: though most live out their lives within a radius of a kilometer or two, some swamp species have been known to fly more than 160 km (100 miles). And they have maneuverability: a mosquito flying through a rainstorm can land safe and dry on the nape of your neck after dodging hundreds of drops that to it are as big as falling refrigerators...
Punctuation, then, is a matter of care. Care for words, yes, but also, and more important, for what the words imply. Only a lover notices the small things: the way the afternoon light catches the nape of a neck, or how a strand of hair slips out from behind an ear, or the way a finger curls around a cup. And no one scans a letter so closely as a lover, searching for its small print, straining to hear its nuances, its gasps, its sighs and hesitations, poring over the secret messages that lie in every cadence. The difference between...
...soldier point the gun at the nape of the man in white," Manila Airport Worker Jessie Barcelona told a hushed Manila courtroom last week. "The gun went off. The man in white toppled forward." The man in white was Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr., the Philippine opposition leader whose assassination in 1983 gave the initial spark to the rebellion that later ousted President Ferdinand Marcos and installed in his place Aquino's widow Corazon...