FOONTING

Leighlaa

While stealing treasures from Shadowfen townsfolk, I stumbled upon a neat item: Monsoon Celebrant's Helical Foont-Pipe . Being, well, me, I wanted to see what exactly they were smoking out of this pipe- what is this mysterious FOONT?



WELLLLLLLL thus began a very fun rabbit-hole adventure on the internet! At first, all the search engines wanted to give me things related to fonts and other nonsense things. Even "+Foonting" didn't give me much. And then I found a poem:

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me, (with big yawning)
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,
That mordiously hath blurted out,
Its earted jurtles, grumbling
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer. [drowned out by moaning and screaming]
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles,
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts,
And living glupules frart and stipulate,
Like jowling meated liverslime,
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me,
With crinkly bindlewurdles.
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't!

For anyone unaware: this is VOGAN POETRY and is notoriously bad..... from the movie "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". But what, exactly, does FOONTING mean? I had found the word, but this poem brought me 0% closer to finding my definition. And then I found a literary discussion forum where they were discussing nonsensical poetry, like this one! Poetry like this actually originates with Lewis Carroll (the author of Alice in Wonderland) and his poem, "Jabberwocky." He wrote it a decade before the Wonderland series as a PARODY POEM that became so, SO much more in the literary world and our lexicons. The poem itself was translated (somehow??) into 65 languages, but what it did for the world of creative writing is so much more significant- it allowed silliness to satirize both the VERY prevalent pretentious verse of the time *and* the ignorant literary critics... ironically enough becoming the topic of serious discussions (LIKE THIS ONE, OBVIOUSLY.)

So really, what does foonting mean? In the end, I was able to find ONE website with an "analysis of Vogan Poetry", which specifically addresses this word. According to the author, the word is a combination of "foolish and fainting" and is an adjective. The combining of two words to make a new word is VERY Lewis Carroll, as he does this with a few words in "Jabberwocky," like "Burbled"- a mixture of three verbs, 'bleat', 'murmur', and 'warble' and one that made it into our NORMAL English lexicon: Chortled, a combination of 'chuckle' and 'snort'. There are a ton of these words that actually became REAL words, not just chortle! So if 'foonting' is a combination word for 'foolish + fainting' (used as adjectives making an adjective), and we need to make it a verb (to foont), that would mean "TO FOONT" can be defined as "to faint in a foolish manner".

So in OUR CONTEXT, replacing the verb 'foonting,' we get: A hollow spiral blowpipe, made of the horn of an unknown sea creature, used for foolishly fainting to welcome the annual monsoon. What could THIS mean? Well, if this is an instrument to be blown, they must blow on it SO MUCH and SO HARD that they faint, foolishly. Which makes sense- because if you're waiting for a monsoon to come, or even trying to encourage it, you're probably in a hot and dry season- so it wouldn't take MUCH blowing on a weird horn before you pass out. And if you're blowing on a horn, hoping to herald a monsoon because you're HOT..... until you pass out.... it's a very foolish thing to do! THUS being a foont-pipe, for foonting.

Anyways, the tl;dr of all of this is...... I really love that the writers for this little flavor text on this treasure used a nonsense word that was introduced into our language as a MEME in the mid 1800s. I love learning new things and finding easter eggs in this game.

I hope you enjoyed this silly word analysis (it's better than doom posts, I think!)

ApoAlaia

This is just the kind of amusing levity I needed, thank you

ESO_player123

Have an Awsome. Really enjoyed this post.

Danikat

I'm surprised anyone made the effort to analyse Vogon poetry. Partially because it's supposed to be physically painful to even read (the 3rd worst in the known galaxy if I remember right) but mostly because I'm fairly certain anyone who does is putting more thought into it than Douglas Adams ever did.

I'm also impressed they managed to make any sense of it.

Now I'm hoping someone from ZOS can tell us if that is in fact where they got it from.

LootAllTheStuff

Do we tell OP that this item is labelled on the card as a musical instrument, although the image at the top is of some sort of banjo-like thing and not a pipe, flute, or whistle? I'm guessing it wouldn't be too disimilar to a conch shell or ram's horn, yielding a mighty "toot" (or more likely "foont" as in the sound, maybe like a ship's fog horn?)

Vogon poetry and Lewis Carroll in an ESO forum post though - did not have that on my Bingo card!