"I can explain all the poems that were ever invented--and a good many that haven't been invented just yet." This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse: "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
"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." "That'll do very well," said Alice: "and "SLITHY" ?" "Well, "SLITHY" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word." "I see it now," Alice remarked thoughtfully: "and what are "TOVES" ?" "Well, "TOVES" are something like badgers--they're something like lizards--and they're something like corkscrews." "They must be very curious looking creatures." "They are that," said Humpty Dumpty: "also they make their nests under sun-dials--also they live on cheese." "And what's the "GYRE" and to "GIMBLE" ?" "To "GYRE" is to go round and round like a gyroscope.

To "GIMBLE" is to make holes like a gimlet." "And "THE WABE" is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose ?" said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
"Of course it is.

It's called "WABE," you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it--" "And a long way beyond it on each side," Alice added.
"Exactly so.

Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you).