Callooh! Callay!

Arragh! 'tis a grand soft evenin' here at me apt. After a night of dorking around GB, shopping, and reading at my second home, The Attic Books and Coffee, I've decided to change my author to Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). It's not that i don't like e.e. cummings, but, as you'll read in my next book review, i've found some incredible items that have piqued my interest. how's that for alliteration?

a nice breath of fresh air after the bonfire-worthy piece of shite that i had to read before (see previous entry). It's frickin hilarious, witty, informative, and interesting, and I'm only on page 67! Added bonus? There is info about my author in there! Check it. Under his entry for "bupkes," Morris writes:

"The term portmanteau word was invented by Lewis Carroll in his Through the Looking Glass to mean 'a word that combines both the sound and the meaning of two other words.' Thus slithy, as Carroll explained in 'Jabberwocky,' meant both 'lithe' and 'slimy.' One of our classic portmaneau words is motel, which combines motor and hotel" (26-27).

Under the entry for "chortle," Morris explains:

"Chortle is a remarkable word, among the very few successful English words that are known to have been coined by a specific person. The inventor of chortle was none other than Lewis Carroll, the author of Through the Looking Glass and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Not surprisingly, given his fantastic imagination, Carroll was fond of inventing his own words. Chortle made its debut in his Through the Looking Glass in 1872, in 'Jabberwocky,' the extraordinary poem-within-a-fable that begins,

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe

At the end of the poem, after the farsom Jabberwock has been slain, Carroll writes,

"And has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

It ws never entirely clear what Carroll ment by chortle, (though some authorities think the word is a combination of chuckle and snort), but that didn't stop people in the late 19th century from adopting the word" (40-41).