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Fun Forgotten Fact
Jan. 18th, 2005 10:07 amNina and I finished Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a few weeks ago, then ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
canetoad worked through The Secret Garden, so now it's my turn again and we decided to pick right back up with Through the Looking Glass. We have two older copies, but neither one looked like it would stand up to a week of bedtime story reading, so instead we are reading from the annotated Martin Gardner version. This has the benefit of being very durable in comparison to the vintage editions, with the mild flaw that the reader, if the reader is me, may become distracted by trying to sneak in a peek at the footnotes, at the expense of the smooth flow of the story. But I can't help myself, if they are short, because you learn the neatest things! For example, I am sure I knew this one once, but forgot it so completely I was momentarily paralyzed with delight:
The word "chortle", meaning "a combination of a chuckle and a snort", was invented by Lewis Carroll and first appeared in written english right there near the end of "Jabberwocky".
Whee!
canetoad worked through The Secret Garden, so now it's my turn again and we decided to pick right back up with Through the Looking Glass. We have two older copies, but neither one looked like it would stand up to a week of bedtime story reading, so instead we are reading from the annotated Martin Gardner version. This has the benefit of being very durable in comparison to the vintage editions, with the mild flaw that the reader, if the reader is me, may become distracted by trying to sneak in a peek at the footnotes, at the expense of the smooth flow of the story. But I can't help myself, if they are short, because you learn the neatest things! For example, I am sure I knew this one once, but forgot it so completely I was momentarily paralyzed with delight:The word "chortle", meaning "a combination of a chuckle and a snort", was invented by Lewis Carroll and first appeared in written english right there near the end of "Jabberwocky".
Whee!
