Dragaera

wot?

Thu Apr 15 16:32:09 PDT 2004

'Wot' in Britain is a lower-class term, most often seen in the caption to a
'Chad' - a stylised cartoon of a face looking over a wall, with the caption
'Wot, no X?' where X could be any commodity.  It originated in the 1940's
as a comment on wartime shortages, and is still sometimes seen.  The
spelling suggests a Cockney pronunciation of 'what'.

Adding 'What?' to the end of a sentence is a British upper-class
affectation, and I'd have thought unrelated.

How it got into a Calvin and Hobbes strip I don't know.

Andrew