‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

If you’ve studied English literature, you’ll recognize that as the first verse of Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky,” from “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” (more commonly known as “Alice in Wonderland”). Carroll (Charles Dodgson, 1832-1898) was known for his playful use of language, and he frequently invented new words to use in his works, some of which (such as the word chortling) are now in standard use. But even though this verse contains mostly nonsense words, they still follow the basic rules of English grammar and vocabulary, and provide a good example for how you can learn new words in your vocabulary-building efforts.

For example, we don’t know what gyre and gimble mean, but because they describe what “the slithy toves did” and where (“in the wabe”), we can identify these words as verbs. We can also identify two adjectives, slithy and mimsy: the first one describes “toves” (whatever they are, but it’s a plural noun) and the second describes “borogoves.” Another clue that slithy and mimsy are probably adjectives is that they both end in –y; adjectives are often formed by adding “y” to the end of a noun (milk/milky, water/watery, risk/risky).

Knowing the patterns that words follow is helpful when you’re learning new words. Let’s look at the nonsense word wabe, and apply some standard English rules. In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice that this word means “the grass plot around a sundial.” Keeping that definition in mind, what would you expect these words to mean?

• waby
• wabiest
• wabeless
• wabeology

We’ve already seen that adding -y to a noun turns it into an descriptive adjective, so waby would mean “like the grass plot around a sundial.” A common way of creating comparatives in English is to add the suffixes -ier and -iest to an adjective to indicate increasing intensity (example: happy, happier, happiest). Using this rule, wabiest would mean “most like the grass plot around a sundial.”

Think of words that end in -less. What do they have in common? If you answered “the lack of something” you’re right; therefore, wabeless would mean “without the grass plot around a sundial.” Finally, wabeology would be the study of wabes (think of the words psychology, physiology, biology, etc.).

In the future, when you come across a word that’s unfamiliar to you, don’t look at it as a nonsense word. Instead, use the tools you have and the patterns you know to decipher what the word means. The more carefully you examine a word, the better able you’ll be to remember it and use it correctly. Word-lover Lewis Carroll might have outgrabed* with joy at such a no-nonsense method of learning new vocabulary words!

*”something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle,” according to Humpty Dumpty