DEAD, adj.Done with the work of breathing; done With all the world; the mad race run Though to the end; the golden goal Attained and found to be a hole! –Squatol Johnes

ARRAYED, pp. Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged to a lamppost.

REPOSE, v.i. To cease from troubling.

REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice.

OPPOSE, v. To assist with obstructions and objections.

RASCALITY, n. Stupidity militant. The activity of a clouded intellect.

ROAD, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.All roads, howsoe’er they diverge, lead to Rome, Whence, thank...

PLAGIARISM, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.

RESIDENT, adj. Unable to leave.

POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.

CANNIBAL, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.

INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity.””All men are ingrates,”” sneered the cynic. “”Nay,”” The good philanthropist replied;””I did great service to a man one day...

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is – it is her shadow.

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron – namely, that he is a blockhead.

PHOENIX, n. The classical prototype of the modern “small hot bird.”

MINOR, adj. Less objectionable.

ENTHUSIASM, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. Byron, who recovered long enough to call it “entuzy-muzy,” had a relapse, which carried him off...

MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.

ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.

Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection’s failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them. In the lines following, addressed to an Emperor in exile...

SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by...

BENEFACTOR, n. One who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without, however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the means of all.

CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.

To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

ALLAH, n. The Mahometan Supreme Being, as distinguished from the Christian, Jewish, and so forth.Allah’s good laws I faithfully have kept, And ever for the sins of man have wept; And sometimes kneeling in the...

PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily conceived. Melsius believed them to have inhabited “the Void” and to have been something intermediate between...

REVIEW, v.t.To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it, Although in truth there’s neither bone nor skin to it) At work upon a book, and so read out of it The qualities that...

PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.

ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one carrying the white man’s burden. (From _zed_, _z_, and _jag_, an Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)He zedjagged so uncomen wyde Thet non coude...

RAMSHACKLE, adj. Pertaining to a certain order of architecture, otherwise known as the Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects...

Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader’s mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example...

DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.

Genealogy, n. An account of one’s descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

PEDIGREE, n. The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor with a swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.

WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.

Politeness is the most acceptable hypocrisy

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know

MACHINATION, n. The method employed by one’s opponents in baffling one’s open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.So plain the advantages of machination It constitutes a moral obligation, And honest wolves who think...

DAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper –the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated...

OCCIDENT, n. The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they...