On Apr 15, 2004, at 9:13 PM, Mia McDavid wrote: > There is a different, much older definition of wot. It used to mean > to know: "I wot not what it might be." "A garden is a lovesome > thing, God wot." See > http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem239.html for the entire > poem. > > Cheers! > > Mia > > Andrew Barton wrote: > >> '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 >> >> http://selfknowledge.com/108710.htm Thesaurus: Wisdom Description and Meaning: Wisdom, Noble Wisdom, Transcendental Wisdom Wot (Wot) (?), 1st & 3d pers. sing. pres. of Wit, to know. See the Note under Wit, v. [Obs.] "Brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it." Acts iii. 17.