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brillig

Diction
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A nonsense word invented by Lewis Carroll. It sounds like a time or weather word, but it has no fixed meaning in ordinary English.

Detailed Definition
In Jabberwocky, Carroll uses invented words like this to create a vivid but unstable world of sound and motion. Readers usually cannot define it from standard English, so it functions more as playful texture than as a dictionary word.
Example
Example in poetry:
“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves” opens Carroll’s invented twilight vocabulary; Humpty Dumpty explains brillig as about four o’clock in the afternoon; the word’s bright sound helps create a made-up but believable world; “at brillig” can suggest a playful, uncanny hour before evening
Additional Notes
The word appears in the opening line, but it is an invented nonce word rather than a familiar English term.; Found in the poem, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Also Known As
twilight evening dusk
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