Humpty Dumpty
  

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thanks to Lewis Carroll for Through the Looking Glass (1872).
  
 

Never mind “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall ...” and all that jazz.

During her journeys “Through the Looking Glass” Alice endured a bizarre conversation in which Humpty Dumpty claimed to be able to use words like “glory” and “impenetrability” to mean just what he wanted them to mean, “neither more nor less”.

But, he says, when he makes a word work extra hard, carrying an extra load of unusual or idiosyncratic meanings, he “pays it extra”.

That’s how words always work: everyone uses them to mean what they want them to mean. Usually they’re careful to use them in ways that other people would understand.


thanks to John F.A. Sawyer for introducing me to the value of this part of Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking Glass for understanding the ways in which people use words
       
 

 

But sometimes works are made to work extra hard.

And then they deserve extra pay.

    
       
  You pay a word extra by allowing it the freedom to speak volumes, enrich ideas, celebrate possibilities, spark ideas ... By letting it resonate and suggest meanings you hadn’t yet thought of ...    
       
  You get the idea. Somewhere between panache and madness, Humpty Dumpty is spinning tales using ordinary words to trick brains into life.  

 

 

  Several “Humpty Dumpty” words occur in my website: e.g., “things”, “animism”, “guesthood”, “people”, “other-than-human persons” ...    
  Click here to go to or return to “Things”    
  click here to go to or return to my Animism site    
  click here to go to or return to “Guesthood”    
  for “other than human persons” (a term coined by Irving Hallowell to talk about what his Ojibwe hosts had taught him) you could read my book Animism: Respecting the Living World. And see its companion website.    
     
  Maybe hedgehogs are Humpty Dumpty persons in this website - I've added a bit about them in my animism site, for which click here.