CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.In controversy with the facile tongue — That bloodless warfare of the old and young — So seek your adversary to engage That on himself he shall exhaust his rage, And, like a snake that’s fastened to the ground,...

MONDAY, n. In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.

PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

Interpreter, n.: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter’s advantage for the other to have said.

BASILISK, n. The cockatrice. A sort of serpent hatched form the egg of a cock. The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal. Many infidels deny this creature’s existence, but Semprello Aurator saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment for having fatally gazed on a lady...

HEAT, n.Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode Of motion, but I know now how he’s proving His point; but this I know –hot words bestowed With skill will set the human fist a-moving, And where it stops the stars burn free and wild._Crede expertum_ –I have seen them, child. –Gorton Swope

NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker.

SHERIFF, n. In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.John Elmer Pettibone Cajee(I write of him with little glee) Was just as bad as he could be.’Twas frequently remarked: “I swon! The sun has never...

DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command.His right to govern me is clear as day, My duty manifest to disobey; And if that fit observance e’er I shut May I and duty be alike undone. –Israfel Brown

DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one’s life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.Hearst kept a diary wherein were writ All that he had of wisdom and of wit. So the Recording Angel, when Hearst died, Erased all entries of his own and cried:””I’ll judge you by your diary.”” Said...

Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers –particularly to those who love not wisely but other men’s wives. Lead is also of great service as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the...

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

APOTHECARY, n. The physician’s accomplice, undertaker’s benefactor and grave worm’s provider.When Jove sent blessings to all men that are, And Mercury conveyed them in a jar, That friend of tricksters introduced by stealth Disease for the apothecary’s health, Whose gratitude impelled him to proclaim:””My deadliest drug shall bear my patron’s name!”” –G.J.

SATYR, n. One of the few characters of the Grecian mythology accorded recognition in the Hebrew. (Leviticus, xvii, 7.) The satyr was at first a member of the dissolute community acknowledging a loose allegiance with Dionysius, but underwent many transformations and improvements. Not infrequently he is confounded with the faun, a later and decenter creation...

ENOUGH, pro. All there is in the world if you like it.Enough is as good as a feast –for that matter Enougher’s as good as a feast for the platter. –Arbely C. Strunk

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.

INADMISSIBLE, adj. Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet...

GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.Beside a lonely grave I stood — With brambles ’twas encumbered; The winds were moaning in the wood, Unheard by him who slumbered,A rustic standing near, I said:””He cannot hear it blowing!””””‘Course not,”” said he: “”the feller’s dead...

POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he possessed it he...

OSTRICH, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.

POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.

REFUGE, n. Anything assuring protection to one in peril. Moses and Joshua provided six cities of refuge –Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh, Schekem and Hebron –to which one who had taken life inadvertently could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased. This admirable expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to enjoy the...

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity

MENDACIOUS, adj. Addicted to rhetoric.

BERENICE’S HAIR, n. A constellation (_Coma Berenices_) named in honor of one who sacrificed her hair to save her husband.Her locks an ancient lady gave Her loving husband’s life to save; And men –they honored so the dame — Upon some stars bestowed her name.But to our modern married fair, Who’d give their lords to...

GRAPE, n.Hail noble fruit! –by Homer sung, Anacreon and Khayyam; Thy praise is ever on the tongue Of better men than I am.The lyre in my hand has never swept, The song I cannot offer: My humbler service pray accept — I’ll help to kill the scoffer.The water-drinkers and the cranks Who load their skins...

ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

ALTAR, n. The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female tool.They stood before the...

MUMMY, n. An ancient Egyptian . . . handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals.

PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called “trousers” by the enlightened and “pants” by the unworthy.

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

FOREORDINATION, n. This looks like an easy word to define, but when I consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long lives in explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations; when I remember the nations have been divided and bloody battles caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination, and that millions...

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of _requiescat in pace_, attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than _reductus in pulvis_.

ROBBER, n. A candid man of affairs. It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling companion lodged at a wayside inn. The surroundings were suggestive, and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn. “”Once there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues.”” Saying nothing more, he was encouraged to...

FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer’s narrative of the war between them and the mice. Skeptical persons have doubted Homer’s authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones...

CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.

JOSS-STICKS, n. Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.

AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.Should you ask me whence this laughter, Whence this audible big-smiling, With its labial extension, With its maxillar distortion And its diaphragmic rhythmus Like the billowing of an ocean, Like the shaking of a carpet, I should answer, I should tell you: From...

ABSTAINER, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.Said a man to a crapulent youth: “”I thought You a total abstainer, my son.””””So I am, so I am,”” said...

Opportunity is a favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.

GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird’s intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an “”author,”” there results a very fair and accurate transcript of...

FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. From the Latin _mens_, a fact unknown to that honest shoe-seller, who,...

FREEDOM, n. Exemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint’s infinite multitude of methods. A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. Liberty. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.Freedom,...

LOCK-AND-KEY, n. The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment.