What is a word?

At first after reading the poem Jabberwocky, I was a little confused. However after going through the poem again and understanding the sensible words, Jabberwocky was a lot more amusing. When reading the lines you begin to wonder if the poem is even English. The poem sounds like perfect English yet we cannot understand it fully. The fact is that we do understand most of the poem yet as a whole it may still be confusing. The sensible words or phrases are comprehendible and of the English language, therefore by using those words as a somewhat guide we can hopefully understand the meaningless words of Carroll’s poem.

I thought it would be interesting to look up the definition or meaning of the word “word.” I looked “word” up on Wikipedia and found that the precise definition is controversial. This was actually interesting since no one can say for sure what the true definition is because a word depends on the language and the type of phrase or sentence it is being used it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word)

All I can say for sure is that in order to make up your own definitions or meanings of the nonsense words in Jabberwocky, Carroll had to incorporate the sensible words into the stanzas. Therefore the nonsense words need sense words in order to understand the context of the poem.