In Chapter 8 of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” our intrepid logical adventurer is talking to the White Knight, who wants to sing to her. He says, “The name of the song is called ‘HADDOCK’S EYES.’”
It turns out of course that the name of the song is really “THE AGED AGED MAN,” though the song is actually called “WAYS AND MEANS.” The confusion here about naming is quite understandable to anyone who has ever ordered TenderSweet™ clams at HoJo’s and discovered that they are neither tender nor sweet.
All of this would be hilarious except that we have to build semantic dictionaries that must deal extensively with the meaning of names in text. This problem will take a while to talk about adequately; and so please tune in tomorrow.
Tags: dictionary, lewis carroll, meaning, name, semantic