![]() ![]() ![]() Humpty Dumpty is not certain about the meaning of ‘mome’, but thinks it’s short for “from home” meaning that they’d lost their way. “Mome rath”: a ‘rath’ is a sort of green pig.“Borogove”: a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round something like a live mop.It is called like that because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it. “Wabe”: the grass-plot round a sun-dial.“To gimble”: to make holes like a gimblet.“To gyre”: to go round and round like a gyroscope.They make their nests under sun-dials and live on cheese. “Toves”: curious creatures that are something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews.“Brillig”: four o’clock in the afternoon - the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.Humpty Dumpty tells her the words mean the following: When publishing the complete poem in ‘Through the Looking-Glass’, Carroll had Humpty Dumpty explain it to Alice. This is an obscure, but yet deeply affecting, relic of ancient Poetry.Ĭarroll added the other verses a few years later during a verse-making game with his cousins. The hill was probably full of the nests of “raths”, which ran out squeaking with fear on hearing the “toves” scratching outside. There were probably sun dials on the top of the hill, and the “borogoves” were afraid that their nests would be undermined. “Hence the literal English of the passage is: “It was evening, and the smooth active badgers were scratching and boring holes in the hill side all unhappy were the parrots, and the grave turtles squeaked out“. “Outgrabe”: past tense of the verb to ‘outgribe’ (it is connected with the old verb to ‘grike’ or ‘shrike’, from which are derived “shriek” and “creak.”) “squeaked”.Head erect, mouth like a shark, the front fore, legs curved out so that the animal walked on its knees, smooth green body, lived on swallows and oysters. “Mome”: (hence ‘solemome’ ‘solemone’ and ‘solemn’) “grave”.They had no wings, beaks turned up, made their nests under sun-dials and lived on veal. “Borogove”: an extinct kind of Parrot.“Mimsy”: (whence ‘mimserable’ and ‘miserable’) ” unhappy”.“Wabe”: (derived from the verb to ‘swab’ or ‘soak’) “the side of a hill” (from it’s being soaked by the rain).“Gymble”: (whence ‘gimblet’) to screw out holes in anything.“Gyre”: verb (derived from ‘gyaour’ or ‘giaour’: “a dog”) “to scratch like a dog.”.They had smooth white hair, long hind legs, and short horns like a stag. “Slythy”: (compounded of ‘slimy’ and ‘lithe’).“Bryllig”: (derived from the verb to bryl or broil).Carroll explained in Mischmasch that the individual words meant the following: The meaning of the words was a little different from Humpty Dumpty’s explanations in “Through the Looking-Glass”. Carroll called it “Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry” ( Gardner, “The Annotated Alice”). The first stanza of the poem originally appeared in a 1855 edition of Mischmasch, a periodical that Carroll wrote and illustrated himself as a boy, for the amusement of his family. The first verse was also made up years before the rest of the poem. How and when Jabberwocky was writtenĭodgson made up the poem long before he published it in “Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there”. In 1868 he wrote to his publisher: “Have you any means, or can you find any, for printing a page or two in the next volume of Alice in reverse?”, and Macmillan responded that it would cost a great deal more to do so. Carroll may have considered printing it mirrorred in full, but abandoned the idea because it would become too costly. ![]() In the book, the first stanza of the poem is actually printed in mirrored font, but the whole poem is printed in normal font on the next page. The poem makes a lot of use of ‘portmanteaus’: a word that is made up of other words. One, two! One, two! And through and through The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! One of the most famous poems from the Alice books is “Jabberwocky”: ![]()
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