What is the first word of the poem 'Jabberwocky'?

The first word of Lewis Carroll's poem “Jabberwocky” is “’Twas.”

The poem begins, “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves,” immediately plunging the reader into Carroll's distinctive nonsense language. The contraction is an old-fashioned form of “it was,” while “brillig” and “slithy” are invented or specially adapted words whose meanings are partly explained later by Humpty Dumpty.

“Jabberwocky” was published in Through the Looking-Glass in 1871, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice encounters it in a book written in mirror writing and must hold it up to a mirror before she can read the poem. The first stanza had appeared much earlier, in 1855, in Carroll's family magazine Mischmasch.

Readers sometimes select “Beware” because it begins the poem's famous warning, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!” However, that line comes later. “The” and “Jabberwock” also appear near the beginning, but the opening word is the contraction “’Twas,” typically printed with a typographic apostrophe.