Editing Eeyore (section)

==A. A. Milne books<span class="anchor" id="In the books"></span>==
Eeyore appears in chapters 4, 6, 7, and 10 of ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' and is mentioned in a few others. He also appears in every chapter of ''The House at Pooh Corner'' except chapter 7. His name is an [[onomatopoeia|onomatopoeic]] representation of the [[braying]] sound made by a normal donkey, usually represented as "hee haw" in [[American English]]: the spelling with an "r" is explained by the fact that Milne and most of his intended audience spoke a [[Rhoticity in English|non-rhotic]] variety of English in which the "r" in "Eeyore" is not pronounced as /r/.<ref>Pyles, Thomas. ''The Origins and Development of the English Language.'' 2nd Edition. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; New York. (1971).</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2008/10/some-onomatopoeia.html |title=some onomatopoeia |website=Separated by a Common Language |first=Lynne |last=Murphy |date=November 1, 2008 |access-date=May 27, 2019 |archive-date=May 27, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190527102239/https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2008/10/some-onomatopoeia.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Physically, Eeyore is described as an "old grey donkey". In [[Ernest H. Shepard|Ernest H. Shepard's]] illustrations, he appears to be about chin-high to [[Pooh]] and about hip-high to [[Christopher Robin]]. He has a long, [[Pin the Tail on the Donkey|detachable tail]] with a pink bow on the end, of which he is very fond, but which he is also prone to losing ([[Owl (Winnie the Pooh)|Owl]] once mistakes it for a bell-pull). Christopher Robin is able to reattach the tail with a [[drawing pin]].

In ''[[The House at Pooh Corner]]'', Eeyore's level of literacy is unclear. When Christopher Robin shows him the letter "A", Eeyore does not understand its meaning, knowing only that "it means learning", something he desperately wants to be seen as having, but he angrily destroys the letter after finding that Rabbit (who is quite literate) knows about it already. Nevertheless, he spells his own name "eoR" when signing the "rissolution" (resolution) that the animals give Christopher Robin as a farewell present in the final chapter. Eeyore also wrote the awkwardly-rhymed poem called "POEM", which appeared on the "rissolution", making him the only character in the Winnie-the-Pooh books other than Pooh himself who attempts to write poetry (a fact that Eeyore himself notes). When Pooh humbly declares that Eeyore's poetry is better than his own, "really believing it to be true", Eeyore vainly replies that "it was meant to be".

Eeyore has a poor opinion of most of the other animals in the Forest, describing them as having "No brain at all, some of them", "only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake" (from chapter 1 of ''The House at Pooh Corner''). Eeyore's favorite food is [[thistles]]. He lives in the southeast corner of the [[Hundred Acre Wood]], in an area labeled "Eeyore's Gloomy Place: Rather Boggy and Sad" on the map in the ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' book. He has a stick house therein called The House at Pooh Corner. Pooh and Piglet built it for him after accidentally mistaking the original house that Eeyore built for a pile of sticks. On Eeyore's birthday, he is given an empty honey jar from Pooh for keeping things in, a popped red balloon from Piglet to keep in the pot, and a note from Owl.

Eeyore is also surprisingly good at the game [[Poohsticks]], winning more times than anyone else when it is played in the sixth chapter.