jabberwocky
noun
Pronunciation
JAB-er-wah-kee PrevNext
Definition
: meaningless speech or writing
Did You Know?
In a poem titled "Jabberwocky" in the book Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872), Lewis Carroll warned his readers about a frightful beast:
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!
This nonsensical poem caught the public's fancy, and by 1908 jabberwocky was being used as a generic term for meaningless speech or writing. The word bandersnatch has also seen some use as a general noun, with the meaning "a wildly grotesque or bizarre individual." It's a much rarer word than jabberwocky, though, and is entered only in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary.
Examples
Amanda learned to ignore her critics, dismissing their attacks as the jabberwocky of minds with nothing more important to think of about.
"When LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh stepped into the crowded room, fashionably late, jabberwocky ceased and the only sound you heard was the whir and click of cameras." — Greg Cote, The Miami Herald, 28 Sept. 2010
Test Your Vocabulary
Unscramble the letters to create a tree's name that may have come from an imaginary creature in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark: OUMBOG.
Merriam-Webster
http://writingforchildrenstage.blogspot.com.au/
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