 According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term " <unk> <unk> " referred to a drink of brandy boiled with <unk> in the seventeenth century . The riddle probably exploited , for <unk> , the fact that " <unk> <unk> " was also eighteenth @-@ century <unk> slang for a short and clumsy person . The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be <unk> damaged , whereas an egg would be . The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle , since the answer is now so well known . Similar <unk> have been recorded by folklorists in other languages , such as " <unk> <unk> " in French , " <unk> <unk> " in Swedish and Norwegian , and " <unk> @-@ <unk> " or " <unk> @-@ <unk> " in different parts of Germany — although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English . 
