This year marks 100 years since famous author Roald Dahl was born. Dahl wrote more than 20 children’s books, including The Twits, Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Roald Dahl was incredibly creative and came up with more than 500 new words and character names.Some examples are Oompa-Loopmas and scrumdiddlyumptious from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and snozzcumbers and frobscottle from the BFG. He called his language Gobblefunk, and loved to play around with words and invent new ones or meanings. This year Oxford University Press even created the Roald Dahl Dictionary, which features almost 8,000 real and imaginary words which he loved to use.
Roald Dahl spent around four hours every day writing stories from his garden shed! He would also only write his stories using a pencil and yellow paper.