 According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term " humpty dumpty " referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century . The riddle probably exploited , for misdirection , the fact that " humpty dumpty " was also eighteenth @-@ century reduplicative 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 irreparably damaged , whereas an egg would be . The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle , since the answer is now so well known . Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages , such as " Boule Boule " in French , " Lille Trille " in Swedish and Norwegian , and " Runtzelken @-@ Puntzelken " or " Humpelken @-@ Pumpelken " in different parts of Germany — although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English . 
