Back then, a “portmanteau” was a suitcase, one that opened into two sections. But Carroll’s “portmanteau” has made it into mainstream dictionaries, as have several other words that Carroll made up for ...

They're going to turn the words into jabberwocky anyway." — Geoff Nunberg, "I Pledge Allegiance to Linguistic Obfuscation," NPR, March 30, 2010. 6. mimsy .

Almost everyone around here knows the excellent bookstore of that name. Most people probably know where the name came from, or at least have stood in uffish thought about it.

All poetry involves a certain facility with words—and often rhymes and meter—but a few poems kick it up a notch and really make us rethink what you can even do with language. Here are five of ...

Take a word. Take another. Ex.: barf and Rice-A-Roni. 2. Split them each in, roughly, in reusable parts (with a one-syllable word you may keep the entire word, or, perhaps, just the first letter). Ex.

A colorful new Alice ballet, with an enormous Jabberwocky puppet Washington Ballet is preparing for its extravaganza of a production, “Alice (in Wonderland).” April 18, 2025 ...