>I have a question - what part of speech is 'outgrabe'?
I have somewhere the Annotated Alice, but my library is so poorly organized (translated: I've got 50 damned boxes of books still in the garage because there's no room in the house, so I went searching in Google. Sure enough, this is what I seemed to remember, from http://home.earthlink.net/~lfdean/carroll/jabberwock.html:
Before incorporating "Jabberwocky" into Looking-Glass, however, Carroll apparently changed his mind as to what some of his words should mean, for when Alice discusses the poem with Humpty Dumpty later in the book, he gives somewhat different interpretations.
"That's enough to begin with," Humpty Dumpty interrupted: "there are plenty of hard words there. 'Brillig' means four o' clock in the afternoon--the time when you begin broiling things for dinner."
"That'll do very well," said Alice: "and 'slithy'?"
"Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy,' 'Lithe' is the same as 'active.' You see it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word."
This is the first of several portmanteaus that Carroll used in "Jabberwocky."
"I see it now," Alice remarked thoughtfully: "and what are 'toves'?"
"Well, 'toves' are something like badgers--they're something like lizards--and they're something like corkscrews."
"They must be very curious-looking creatures."
"They are that," said Humpty Dumpty: "also they make their nests under sundials--also they live on cheese."
"And what's to 'gyre' and to 'gimble'?"
"To 'gyre' is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To 'gimble' is to make holes like a gimlet."
"And 'the wabe' is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?" said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
"Of course it is. It's called 'wabe,' you know, because it goes a long way before it, and long way behind it--"
"And a long way beyond it on each side," Alice added.
"Exactly so. Well then,'mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' (there's another portmanteau for you). And a 'borogove' is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round--something like a live mop."
"And then 'mome raths'?" said Alice. "I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble."
"Well, a 'rath'is a sort of green pig: but 'mome' I'm not certain about. I think it's short for 'from home'--meaning that they'd lost their way, you know."
"And what does 'outgrabe' mean?"
"Well, 'outgrabing' is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe--down in the wood yonder--and, when you've once heard it, you'll be quite content" (Carroll The Annotated Alice 270-2).
Unfortuantely, this is where Humpty Dumpty, and Carroll, ends his interpretation. We can, however, by means of several methods determine what Carroll is likely to have meant by most of his nonsense words. The first of these methods is to consider what Carroll told confused readers.
For example, in 1877 he wrote to Maud Standen, one of his child-friends, that "uffish" suggested to him "a state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish and the temper huffish" (Gardner The Annotated Alice 196). In the same letter he points out that "burble" can be created in the following manner: "If you take the three verbs 'bleat 'murmur,' and warble,'and select the bits I have underlined, it certainly makes 'burble': though I am afraid I can't distinctly remember having made it in that way" (Gardner The Annotated Alice 196). Carroll also reused eight of the nonsense words for "Jabberwocky" in his nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark." One of these words, "frumious," is explained in the preface.
... take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards "fuming," you will say "fuming-furious"; if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say "furious-fuming"; but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious" (Gardner The Annotated Alice 195).
Several of Carroll's words have become so much a part of our language that they can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to several of the words defined by Humpty Dumpty, these include "galumph," which is defined as a combination of "gallop" and "triumphant" and means "to march on exultantly with irregular bounding movements" (Gardner The Annotated Alice 196), and "chortle" which is defined as a combination of "chuckle" and "snort" (Gardner The Annotated Alice 197). It is fairly safe to assume that these are the definitions that Carroll wanted attached to his words.
