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Jun 29, 2026
This week’s themeEponyms This week’s words 
Page from Lewis Carroll’s handwritten and self-illustrated manuscript of
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (1864), the early version of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland
Image: British Library / Wikimedia Previous week’s theme Even more unusual synonyms Wordsmith Games
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargEarlier this year, I came across a fascinating story about the marathoner Jeff Galloway, who popularized the run-walk-run method. As The New York Times (permalink) reported, the method “by giving people permission to walk regularly, allowed more people to become consistent runners. It has since become known as the Galloway method, and in some parts of the world, Jeffing.” Galloway was among the few people to have run a marathon in seven consecutive decades, from his teens into his 70s. He hoped to become the first person to run a marathon in eight consecutive decades, but he died earlier this year, at 80. But he left a rare linguistic legacy: both Jeff, the name he went by, and Galloway, his surname, gave rise to eponyms. The terms Jeffing and the Galloway method aren’t in the dictionaries yet, but that hardly disqualifies them. Words do not wait for lexicographers to cut the ribbon. This week, we’ll feature five eponyms that have already gone the distance and made it into the dictionary. Carrollian
PRONUNCIATION:
(kuh-ROH-lee-uhn)
MEANING:
adjective: Fanciful, absurd, logic-twisting, or playfully nonsensical.
ETYMOLOGY:
After Lewis Carroll, pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898),
author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Earliest documented
use: 1907.
NOTES:
Alice follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and enters a fantastical
world where ordinary logic keeps changing hats. In theoretical physics, Carrollian describes what the equations predict if the speed of light were to approach zero. Signals could no longer travel from one place to another, and ordinary motion would freeze. Even the White Rabbit would have nowhere to hurry. USAGE:
“If Joanna Kavenna’s 2016 novel, A Field Guide to Reality, took us down
a dreamy, Carrollian rabbit hole,
then Zed, her latest, is more post-Orwellian nightmare.” Sophie Ratcliffe; If Dickens Did Digital Dystopia; The Daily Telegraph (London, UK); Jul 20, 2019. “There is a Carrollian logical zaniness in this latest work, too.” Alberto Manguel; I’ll Sell You a Dog by Juan Pablo Villalobos (review); The Guardian (London, UK); Oct 29, 2016. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
And the fox said to the little prince: men have forgotten this truth, but
you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have
tamed. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (29 Jun 1900-1944)
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