Dragaera

wot?

Kenneth Gorelick pulmon at comcast.net
Thu Apr 15 18:37:15 PDT 2004

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.