The small of the back—the part of one’s lower back where the spine curves in—is so called because it’s the narrowest point. When Vladimir Nabokov wrote about that in English, he borrowed the sexy French word ensellure. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ensellure”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Jack.
Where are you calling from, Jack?
Dolores, Colorado.
Dolores, Colorado.
Well, welcome to the show.
How can Martha and I help you?
Hiya, Jack.
Hi, Martha.
Well, I had a question about a term that I’ve heard most of my life, and that’s the small of the back.
And I don’t remember why I was thinking of the term, but I think it was on a Saturday after listening to your show, and I thought, hey, I know how to find out where that term comes from.
So small of the back.
And which part of the back is that?
Well, I don’t know if there’s a technical or anatomical designation, but I think of it as the middle center of my lower back.
Like if somebody’s going to put their arm around your waist, they might put it there?
Or you might put it around somebody’s waist?
Yes, right.
Yeah.
So wait, just above the cleft of the bum, right?
At the bottom of the bum?
Yeah.
Well, if you put it that way, yes, I was going to say the lumbar incurvation.
Oh, wow.
That’s sexy.
Isn’t that nice?
That’s the term, yeah.
Isn’t that nice?
Lumbar incurvation?
Yeah, so why do we call it the small of the back? That is kind of weird, isn’t it?
Well, I’m not sure. The only thing I could think of was if small had some kind of a meaning like whale or depression in it, referring to incurvature.
Yeah, well, that’s pretty close.
Yeah, small used to refer to the slender or the narrow part of something.
And so sometimes people would talk about the small of my arm, which would be like right before your wrist or the small of your leg, which is right before your ankle.
And the small of the back is the one phrase that really stuck around with us. It’s been around since the 1600s, 1500s.
So that’s because that’s where your waist is at its narrowest?
Yeah, where your back is. If you look at somebody in profile, you know, the back is a little bit more narrow there.
And it sounds strange to us because usually we think of small as an adjective, but here it’s a noun.
It’s a noun, exactly.
And there aren’t many ways that small is a noun these days.
So Jack, does that help?
That does indeed.
Yeah, so it’s not something recent.
And Jack, I can give you a much more sexy word for that if you’d like.
Sure.
Well, this word is borrowed from French, and Victor Nabokov used it in Lolita.
It’s the term encelure.
Say it again.
It’s spelled E-N-S-E-L-L-U-R-E, encelure.
Nabokov has some cool lines like, he could see down her sleek encelure.
Ooh, well, hello, hi.
Yeah, so you can use either the smile of the back or encelure if you like.
Okay.
I think we’ve just launched a new turn into the poetry chapbooks being made all across America.
Jack, thanks so much for your call today.
Well, very good. Thank you guys.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
I always think of when I hear a small of the back of that speech that Kevin Costner delivers in Bull Durham about the things that he loves.
Oh.
Including one of them is the small of a woman’s back.
Oh.
I’d forgotten that.
Yeah.
It’s really wonderful.
It’s on YouTube.
It’s got like a million plays.
Go for it.
Okay.
And in the meantime, you can call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673.
Or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.
