The third day of an interest in etymology

Etymology #3

Twinkle is a shiny word

A sparkling, glittering, winking verb

A two-syllabic, iambic light

Constantly changing from faint to bright

Having a friendly or happy face

Moving lightly from place to place

Glinting and flickering in a dance

Stars like diamonds in the distance

Its origins are in the Germanic tongue

Developed in Old English twinkelian

Repeated in a nursery rhyme

Twinkle hasn’t dulled with time

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are.

‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ is a popular English nursery rhyme or lullaby, which children at the Bounce and Rhyme sessions love. The words are from an early 19th-century English poem by Jane Taylor, ‘The Star’. The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery. It is sung to the tune of the French melody Ah! vous dirai-je, maman, which was published in 1761 and later arranged by several composers including Mozart. The English version has six stanzas, although only the first is widely known. Lewis Carroll parodied it in Alice in Wonderland, in which the Mad Hatter recites:

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!