Editing Riddle (section)

===Definitions===

Defining riddles precisely is hard and has attracted a fair amount of scholarly debate. The first major modern attempt to define the riddle in modern Western scholarship was by [[Robert Petsch]] in 1899,<ref>[[Robert Petsch|Petsch, Robert]]. "Neue Beitrëge zur Kenntnis des Volksrätsels", ''Palaestra'', 4 (1899).</ref> with another seminal contribution, inspired by [[structuralism]], by [[Robert A. Georges]] and [[Alan Dundes]] in 1963.<ref name="Georges and Dundes">Georges, Robert A.; Dundes, Alan. "Towards a Structural Definition of the Riddle", ''Journal of American Folklore'', 76(300) (1963), 111–18 {{doi|10.2307/538610}}, {{JSTOR|538610}}. Reprinted in Alan Dundes, ''Analytic Essays in Folklore'' (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 95–102.</ref> Georges and Dundes suggested that "a riddle is a traditional verbal expression which contains one or more descriptive elements, a pair of which may be in opposition; the referent of the elements is to be guessed".<ref name="Georges and Dundes"/> There are many possible sub-sets of the riddle, including [[charades]], [[droodles]], and some [[Riddle joke|jokes]].

In some traditions and contexts, riddles may overlap with [[proverb]]s.<ref>John C. Messenger, Jr. 1960. "Anang Proverb-Riddles". ''The Journal of American Folklore'' Vol. 73, No. 289: pp. 225–235. {{doi|10.2307/537975}}. {{JSTOR|537975}}.</ref><ref>Finnegan, Ruth. ''Oral Literature in Africa''. The Saylor Foundation, 1982. p.&nbsp;418.</ref><ref>Umoh, S. J. 2007. "The Ibibio Proverb—Riddles and Language Pedagogy". ''International Journal of Linguistics and Communication'' 11(2), 8–13.</ref> For example, the Russian phrase "Nothing hurts it, but it groans all the time" can be deployed as a proverb (when its referent is a hypochondriac) or as a riddle (when its referent is a pig).<ref>Alan Dundes, "On the Structure of the Proverb", in ''Analytic Essays in Folklore'', ed. by Richard Dorson (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 103–8.</ref>