Poll time!

[conuly]

We were playing boggle. One of us put in the word wabe, but was shouted down. That person uses the word wabe in her daily life. (The wabe is a word from Jabberwocky, the area around a sundial. That's the poem the word chortle comes from.)

[Poll #892202]

By the way, the person who put down wabe was me. Of course. And I do so use it in my daily life! Every time we go past Snug Harbor's sundial, I remind Ana not to trample any of the plants in the wabe. She can go up and look at the sundial, so long as the plants stay untrampled. No gyring or gimbeling for her!

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'd say technically it should stay a nonword, even though it's very hard to keep it that way. My point isn't that some of these words do make it into standard usage, just that we should try to keep them from becoming so common that they lose their charm as nonsense words, because it's a great book and a great poem, and I want future generations to enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed. I may well be fighting a losing battle, but that's the battle I am fighting.