In Jokes in Books | Main | Movies: The King
November 03, 2006
Research Day - snark/snarky
I made a snarky comment today to a friend and then felt a bit bad about it and apologized to him but he didn't know the term and asked me the derivation so I guessed that it was from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.
Well, it turns out, according to Wikipedia, that I was wrong and there is no connection to the story. However, what makes this annecdote interesting to me is that it turns out there is a connection to Lewis Carroll because snark is actually a portmanteau of "snide remark" and it turns out Lewis Carroll invented the usage of pormanteau to refer to a compositing of words together in Through the Looking Glass with the word "slithy".
Posted by aarondf at November 3, 2006 05:31 PM
Comments
Thanks for the insight into "Snarky"...a commonly used word in our household...I always had a feeling it was a portmanteau but I couldn't decipher the "remark" bit :)
Posted by: zosa ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/hearth/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 3, 2006 11:37 PM
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