DEGENERATE, adj. Less conspicuously admirable than one’s ancestors. The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy; it required ten of them to raise a rock or a riot that one of the heroes of...

Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach...

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.

Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

BAIT, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty.

KILL, v.t. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.

MOLECULE, n. The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter....

History is an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

ACADEME, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

PORTABLE, adj. Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of possession.His light estate, if neither he did make it Nor yet its former guardian forsake it, Is portable improperly, I take it. –Worgum Slupsky

LYRE, n. An ancient instrument of torture. The word is now used in a figurative sense to denote the poetic faculty, as in the following fiery lines of our great poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:I sit...

PYRRHONISM, n. An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.So skilled the parson was in homiletics That all his normal purges and emetics To medicine the spirit were...

A bride is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

SCARABEE, n. The same as scarabaeus.He fell by his own hand Beneath the great oak tree. He’d traveled in a foreign land. He tried to make her understand The dance that’s called the Saraband, But...

CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.

ABRIDGE, v.t. To shorten.When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which...

RED-SKIN, n. A North American Indian, whose skin is not red –at least not on the outside.

IMPROVIDENCE, n. Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues of to-morrow.

CONDOLE, v.i. To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin...

Habit is a shackle for the free.

SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine. Frequently appended to each installment is a “”synposis of preceding chapters”” for those who...

PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation.

USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that...

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others

INSECTIVORA, n.””See,”” cries the chorus of admiring preachers,””How Providence provides for all His creatures!””””His care,”” the gnat said, “”even the insects follows: For us He has provided wrens and swallows.”” –Sempen Railey

RIBROASTER, n. Censorious language by oneself concerning another. The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious writers of...

SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the...

RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.

BOTANY, n. The science of vegetables –those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-...

ECONOMY, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.

A penny saved is a penny to squander.

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a...

WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.They took away his...

Liar, n.: A lawyer with a roving commission.

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.Done to a turn on the iron, behold Him who to be famous aspired. Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold, And his twistings are greatly admired. –Hassan Brubuddy

LEVIATHAN, n. An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with considerable heat that it was a species...

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...