Why Roald Dahl's Frobscottle and horrigust will always beat Skibidi and TikTok slang: His guide to absurd joy

Unintentionally, Roald Dahl gave his own twist to Bob Marley’s famous quote. His version might as well have been:

Everyone’s batty and weird. You’ve just got to find the right kind of batty.

Reading Dahl nudges you into the absurd, the silly, the bizarre. As his ever-reliable character Matilda herself said, if you’re going to do something crazy, go the full hog—never in halves. That’s what Dahl taught us as children.

This was childhood: a reminder that you don’t need to walk anywhere to travel. You just need your imagination.

And that’s the message his young readers absorbed. Growing up on a diet of Dahl, made you twist words into conniptions and come up with something new, just for fun. For instance, the BFG, as he was called, was one of Dahl’s battiest, yet most joyous books that had a vocabulary could trump today’s lexicon of ‘skibbidi’ and the like.

I’m sorry folks, skibidi, FOMO, OOTD pale in front of scrumdiddlyumptous. That word really captures everything you want to say, now doesn’t it? And…dalgona, other TikTok trends doesn’t stand a chance in front of frobscottle, another delicious drink invented by Roald Dahl for BFG.

Moreover, when he wasn’t inventing words, he also brought different words to express staid words like ‘nonsense’ and ‘rubbish’. Why say those words, when you can use ‘Balderdash?’ He liked to ‘gobblefunk’ around with words, though his BFG sternly told the main character Sophie not to do so, when she was correcting him. So, we had flushbunking (another word to say rubbish), and redunculous, along with ‘fizzwhiggler’ to imply a very cruel and mean person.

It's almost as if he created a language just for him and the children. We understood, even if adults couldn’t. At the end of the day, you wanted to speak like the BFG, mix up words and say, “Crook and nanny” instead of “nook and cranny”, or instead of Charles Dickens, perhaps just Dahl’s chickens.

It was just so much easier to live in Dahl’s world as a child.

While all his fantastical children’s stories dealt with the fun and absurd, Matilda did too, but also emphasised on the importance of reading, without ever, being too much on the nose. The story followed a little girl, neglected by obnoxious parents, who spends the first four years of her life sitting and reading.

And the way Dahl describes it so magical and visceral: You feel the love of books flowing through you, as Matilda devours book after book, from Charles Dickens novels such as Great Expectations and Pride and Prejudice. At the age of five, she offers calm and composed critique too, confusing the wits out of the affable librarian.

Following this, Matilda is put into school, where her teacher quickly learns that she is a child prodigy, no less. But, unfortunately she is up against ‘The Trunchbull’, the headmistress of the school who is exactly as she sounded: A formidable, cruel bully, and in other symbol, an adult who was curbing a child’s social and emotional development. Her visits to the classroom are feared, though one particularly witty insight was her asking a child to spell difficulty (which is how most of learnt it, to be honest), and he recites the way his class teacher, Miss Honey taught him: MRS D, MRS I, MRS FFI, MRS C MRS U MRS LTY

And Trunchbull’s response to this is, “Why are all these women married?”

In these little ways that never seemed preachy or sermon-like, Dahl, in all the fun and madness, showed children the love of learning, reading, but, also never forget your imagination. It’s the best gift, you could have.

Dahl taught us to mess around with the silliness, because, in the absurdity, you can find the most sense. He showed us to never accept things as they were; dream a little. Maybe, you could get a ticket to the chocolate factory, or you could dream of flying away on a giant peach into the skies, that is strung by seagulls. And, you’ll be loved as you are, as he showed in Witches, where the lead protagonist was turned into a mouse. The quote: My darling," she said at last, are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?" "I don't mind at all" I said. It doesn't matter who you are as long as someone loves you.

But don’t be wicked folks. Dahl also taught you, that it doesn’t matter if you have a wonky chin or a crooked noise, because if you have good thoughts, you’ll look like sunshine. But if you have mean thoughts, it will show like it did for Mrs Twit.

Thanks for the lessons, Dahl.