User:Gnusmas/Humpty Dumpty

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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and took a tumble, and we regret to inform you that all the efforts of the King's equine and human followers failed to restore him to his original condition. You can read more about him in a well-known trustworthy encyclopedia.

More intriguingly, however, Mr. Dumpty is also a character in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, where he confuses Alice by using words with non-standard meanings, explaining “When I use a word, ... it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”[1]

Is this an early example of liberal redefinition? Or was Humpty Dumpty in fact a turnip?

References[edit]

  1. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There: full text at Project Gutenberg.