Roald Dahl has a very distinctive way of writing that many children enjoy. Dahl has a very humorous style that uses unique adjectives in his descriptive writing. The names that Dahl gives to his characters complement the personality and features of that character. Dahl attracts children with excellent wordplay in all his books. He uses lots of sound words, interesting adjectives. He enriches a whole new vocabulary of invented words whose meanings come from their sounds. Dahl's works also have a lot of rhyme, rhythm and humor. Dahl’s distinctive writing style is so very contagious and many children like his out of the box thinking. "Gobblefunk" is Roald Dahl's own language. The words are found across his literature. and explain meaning when Dahl's dreamworld transcends normal adjectives.
Roald Dahl had invented a lot of new word. There are 3 main group of word that Dahl invented.
The first group of words consists of new words that have come from new things. In the book BFG there are a lot of new words that represent this group, for example frobscotlle. Frobscotlle is a nice soft drink bubbles. Phizz-whizzing and whizzpopping may sound similar, but they mean very different things! Something that is phizz-whizzing is excellent or splendid. Whizzpopping, on the other hand, is what happens when air comes out of your bottom with a popping sound (as when you drink a lot of frobscottle).
A trogglehumper is one of the very worst nightmares you can have. Words invented by Dahl that start with trog- always mean unpleasant things!
Roald Dahl invented new creatures too. Oompa-lampa – small people that work at Wonka’s factory, crabcruncher – creature that lives in high cliffs, around the sea.
The second group consists of words similar to other words. Exundly-exactly, in this word only two - three letters have been changed. We can easily understand the meaning of the word: crumpets-trumpets, porteedo – torpedo, majesty – majester, children - childers. Catasterous - disasterous, delumptious-delicious are formed from the defect of speech of the BFG. Human bean is what the giant calls human beings.
The third group is similar to the second group. In the third group there are words that Roald Dahl changed almost completely. For example for the word caught Roald Dahl invented 7 gobblefunks: bopmuggered, crodsquinkled, fluckgungled, flushbunkled , gunzleswiped, swogswallowed, splitzwiggled.
From the sounds of the words we can tell that the words are not describing a nice experience but it is much more difficult to trace their origins.
However here are some ideas of how they are formed.
Gunzleswiped, for example suggests “gunge” ‘ a thick gooey substance and “swiped” means hit by a strong blow. So in this case we could imagine someone being caught up in gunge.
Swogswallowed suggests “frog” and “swallowed” and so the person might be caught by a reptile and is in danger of being swallowed.
Spiltzwiggled sounds particularly awkward – splitz suggest “doing the splits”, swiggled suggest swigs and therefore drunk. If you are switzswiggled you might be so drunk that you are doing the splits and stuck.
Bopmuggered suggests bopped i.e. hit on the head, to mug means to attack someone while walking and so “bopmuggered” might mean to be hit on the head and taken captive.
A final point to make about Roald Dahl’s use of words is that he is writing in a long tradition of English writers who created “nonsense” words. The most famous of these writers is Lewis Carroll who wrote 'Alice in Wonderland'. He also wrote a wonderful poem called 'The Jabberwocky' which is full of invented words. When you read Dahl and Lewis Carrol , your imagination is expanded by their use of words.
Page editor Katya Meshtcheryakova
Project
Year 6