Borogove

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A thin, shabby-looking imaginary bird with feathers sticking out in every direction, invented by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass
2. An invented creature from Lewis Carroll's nonsense writing, described as a scruffy, mop-like bird with untidy feathers
3. A fictional bird in Lewis Carroll's works, imagined as thin and shabby, with its plumage sticking out all around like a mop

Etymology: Lewis Carroll invented "borogove" in 1855 for his nonsense poem "Jabberwocky," and it is one of the few coinages in that poem whose meaning he later spelled out himself. In the book "Through the Looking-Glass," Humpty Dumpty explains that a borogove is "a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, something like a live mop." Carroll's own explanation of the word is therefore a set of pictures rather than a dictionary definition. Carroll gave the bird a second, more elaborate description in "Mischmasch," an earlier piece of his writing. There it is "an extinct kind of parrot," with no wings, beaks turned up, nests built under sun-dials, and a diet of veal. The two descriptions do not agree on details, which suits a word made for play: the creature exists only as far as the reader's imagination is willing to take it.