LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.The rising People, hot and out of breath, Roared around the palace: “”Liberty or death!””””If death will do,”” the King said, “”let me reign; You’ll have, I’m sure,...

COURT FOOL, n. The plaintiff.

HEART, n. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments . . . . It is now known that sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from...

OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.

DOG, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection...

SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.

PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic. The editor of an English magazine having received a letter pointing out the...

QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the United States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of...

PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn.

PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.

GREAT, adj.”I’m great,” the Lion said –“I reign The monarch of the wood and plain!”The Elephant replied: “I’m great — No quadruped can match my weight!””I’m great –no animal has half So long a neck!”...

MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.

PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.

MUMMY, n. An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with an excellent pigment. He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar...

HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live. Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men...

RESPIRATOR, n. An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its passage to the lungs.

Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.

SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its contents, madam.

CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

A miracle is an act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.

INEXPEDIENT, adj. Not calculated to advance one’s interests.

MEEKNESS, n. Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.M is for Moses, Who slew the Egyptian. As sweet as a rose is The meekness of Moses. No monument shows his Post-mortem inscription,...

DRAGOON, n. A soldier who combines dash and steadiness in so equal measure that he makes his advances on foot and his retreats on horseback.

GENTEEL, adj. Refined, after the fashion of a gent.Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal: A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel. Heed not the definitions your “”Unabridged”” presents, For dictionary makers...

J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel –than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has been but slightly modified, was that of the tail...

Treat things divine with marked respect – don’t have anything to do with them

An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

HOURI, n. A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul....

To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.

SLANG, n. The grunt of the human hog (_Pignoramus intolerabilis_) with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a...

EPAULET, n. An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the enemy –that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his death would give promotion.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

Mythology: the body of a primitive people’s beliefs, concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later

MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

PICKANINNY, n. The young of the _Procyanthropos_, or _Americanus dominans_. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.

LINEN, n. “A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp.” –Calcraft the Hangman.

IMPALE, v.t. In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains fixed in the wound. This, however, is inaccurate; to imaple is, properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into...

FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the...

PLEASURE, n. The least hateful form of dejection.

PROOF, n. Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to that of only one.

MANES, n. The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans. They were in a state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they had exhaled were buried and burned; and they seem not to...

LEONINE, adj. Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler...

Reporter, n.: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to _be_ something from the man who wishes to _do_ something. A man of great wealth,...

SATAN, n. One of the Creator’s lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused,...

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog

GRACES, n. Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according...

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.

MESMERISM, n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.

SACRED, adj. Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama of Thibet; the Moogum of M’bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the Cow in...