Image created by ChatGPT on reading The Gollywumpa poem

Nonsense with nonce

Introduction: Nonce words are nonsense words created for a specific situation, often in children’s poetry.  In Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky, he invented the nonce words chortle and galumph, which are now in current use as part of the language.  Perhaps the most famous nonce word — runcible — was created by Edward Lear for his poem The Owl and the Pussycat.  There is no such thing as a runcible spoon.  Lear loved the word so much he wrote about runcible hats, runcible cats and a runcible wall. 

Invite students to invent their own nonce words and use them in poems or stories.  They could also draw what they think their Gollywumpa looks like.

The Gollywumpa by James Aitchison

Here it comes,
two heads and a nose,
how it got them
nobody knows.

Purple wings
grow out of one ear,
in the other a cabbage,
so how can it hear?

Its favourite song
is Bonglybooboo,
the words of which
it found in the zoo.

It doesn’t have feet,
it runs on three wheels,
and when it gets hungry
it dines on eel meals.

It hates the winter,
does the poor gollywumpa,
so it puts on five hats
and a thicketty jumper.