"That's enough to begin with," Humpty Dumpty interrupted: "there are plenty of hard words there, `Brillig' means four o'clock in the afternoon -- the time when you begin broiling things for dinner."

By Lewis Carroll
from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872
(derived from the verb BRYL or BROIL), "the time of broiling dinner," i.e. the close of the afternoon.


Carroll's definition, printed in 1855, cited by The Annotated Alice

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.