Slightly troubled by the lack of connection between the word gimble and its function, I emailed the inventor to find out where it came from.
I can't believe I didn't make the connection sooner, when the word is taken from the only lines of Lewis Carroll's The Jabberwocky that I know off-by-heart:
Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabes,
All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe . . .
The inventor of the Gimble, this perfectly useful boomerang-shaped thingummy, found that all the book-related names had already been nabbed, so he decided to go for a nonsense word instead.
I think I could get used to it.
Panic over.
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