ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.

WOMAN, n.An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former...

TRIAL, n. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. In order to effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the...

ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.

BOTTLE-NOSED, adj. Having a nose created in the image of its maker.

WEATHER, n. The climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it...

BOUNTY, n. The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...