Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A deciduous tree (Fouquieria columnaris) native to northern Mexico and found chiefly in Baja California, having a thick tapering columnar trunk, slender spiny branches, and yellow flowers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An imaginary animal introduced by C. L. Dodgson (“Lewis Carroll”) as a particularly dangerous variety of ‘snark,’ into his “Hunting of the Snark.”

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun physics A geometric pattern sometimes observed on the surface of superfluid helium-3
  • noun botany A species of tree (Fouquieria columnaris) native to Baja California, Mexico.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After the Boojum, an imaginary character in the poem The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Nonsense word from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll

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Examples

  • Lucia is trying assign homework about Zbigniew Jaworowski, which has got to be one of the silliest things that anyone ever tried, especially since Jim Easter, aka the boojum and Eli does miss his posting cut him up into tiny pieces and left him for stupid.

    Rabett Run EliRabett 2009

  • In the middle of the day, in the middle of the peninsula, we rolled through a long valley landscaped with millions of huge wind-carved boulders, some as big as houses, giant cardon cacti (the saguaro's larger cousins), and tall skinny boojum plants with orange blooms on top - described as upside-down carrots.

    The Baja Highway from top to bottom 2007

  • In the middle of the day, in the middle of the peninsula, we rolled through a long valley landscaped with millions of huge wind-carved boulders, some as big as houses, giant cardon cacti (the saguaro's larger cousins), and tall skinny boojum plants with orange blooms on top - described as upside-down carrots.

    The Baja Highway from top to bottom 2007

  • Their vernacular names suggest how they command our attention: elephant tree, boojum, jumping cholla, creeping devil, and shindagger.

    Adaptations of desert plants 2009

  • The boojum and his slithy toves tore this apart, and for those who do not enjoy gray-green secretions on the floor, Hans Oeschger did the honors in Environmental Science & Pollution Research 2 1 1995, pp. 60-61 as did and so did Eli a bit, on the way to ripping a new one for S.

    Archive 2008-03-01 EliRabett 2008

  • I think what a few people like Anshe are doing is great... but it would scare the boojum out of me to have my future entirely tied to another company's bottom-line like that.

    SL Economy Misunderstood Again 2007

  • Maybe a great Open Source platform will pop up from Sun or IBM or maybe Microsoft will decide to monetize the boojum out of it.

    Shirky FTW 2006

  • Note: if I try to sell it, the Children's Television Workshop will sue the boojum out of me for copyright infringement, as well they should.

    But is it Pr0n? 2006

  • Thursday 7/15/04 12:58pm - ... wherein Peter tries to determine whether the Snipe is also a boojum.

    Peter Rogers's Blog 2004

  • "" For the Snark was a boojum, you see! "" she exclaimed.

    A Darker Place King, Laurie R. 1999

Comments

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  • he was a boojum, you see!

    September 14, 2007