Daily Archives: January 11, 2009

A word you can play in Scrabble even though its meaning is less than perfectly agreed upon. It has the merit, at least, of being among that special set of words the origin of which is known exactly: in this case, Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky,” from Through the Looking-Glass (1871). And Carroll has indicated the blend on which he based it. But before I tell you what he thought it should mean, let me ask you to taste it and think of what it seems to you it should mean. In spite of the tone of its use in “Jabberwocky,” we see it used by Rudyard Kipling in phrases such as “frabjous asses” and “frabjously immoral,” and the Oxford English Dictionary has found a 1935 “frabjously late.” Well. The tone of those uses notwithstanding, it almost seems fabulous to me, but with a definite taste of raspberry aided by the French for the same, framboise. The juiciness of jous also comes in, though it might look like joust and sound like just. On the other hand, it has a definite echo of fractious and perhaps hints of frazzle and grab. It may seem slightly odd in form, but those who think the jammed b and j un-English would do best to abjure such ideas. It has a nice incipient spirality by grace of the curved ascender of f and descender of j. And if, like Alice, you find “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are,” I may as well reveal to you that Carroll, it is reported, had fair, fabulous and joyous in mind when he wrote “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy.” Oh, yes, chortled – another of the several words introduced to English by that poem. Only people seem actually to know and agree on what chortle means.