In Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Alice finds herself in an alternate universe.  She discovers a book of poetry that she can only read by holding up to a mirror.  And so we’re introduced to the poem, “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll.

In what's perhaps the best known nonsense poem in English literature, Lewis Carroll used portmanteau to create a fanciful language that makes perfect sense.  French for “overcoat,” a portmanteau joins two or more words, resulting in a new word with a combined meaning.  For example, “slithy” stands for both “lithe” and “slimy” or so Humpty Dumpty told Alice. “Frumious” is a combination of “fuming” and “furious.”  Still, some words in "Jabberwocky" are just evocative—an exhortation to celebrate, in the case of “Callooh!”

Carroll probably didn’t realize the hold his poem would have over generations to come.  Some Jabberwocky-inspired creations include:

• Marianne Faithful's song “Jabberwoc,” appearing in her album, “Come My Way,” released in 1965
• The short story, “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” by Lewis Padgett (Harry Kuttner and C.L. Moore), later adapted to become the film, “The Last Mimzy,” directed by Bob Shaye
• Kirk and Spock’s song in “Plato’s Stepchildren” (1968) ("I'm Tweedledee, he's Tweedledum. We're spacemen marching to and from. We slythe among the mimsy troves.  And tire among the borogroves" - hmmm, maybe Carroll could have done without that homage)
• The cult classic, “Jabberwocky,” which marked Terry Gilliam’s 1977 directorial debut and spawned the tagline: “Jabberwocky: the monster so horrible that people caught the plague to avoid it”

• cyborg - from cybernetic and organism
• permafrost - from permanent and frost
• petrochemical - from petroleum and chemical
• positron - from positive and electron
• transceiver - from transmitter and receiver
• transponder - from transmitter and responder
• Warfarin - from WARF (the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation) and coumarin