(n.) rejoice! the debts, and the anxieties over those same debts, won't be attacking your dreams tonight.

practiced in the Jewish tradition every 50 or so years, freeing all slaves and releasing all debts.
practiced in ancient Babylonia and Syria (or so I've skim-read a few minutes ago).

(also: tabula rasa)

A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
(also: the devils dictionary)

The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only. This important distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the mediæval Church and there was much bloodshed about it. Certain Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ's body, were known as Ubiquitarians. For this error they were doubtless damned, for Christ's body is present only in the eucharist, though that sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously. In recent times ubiquity has not always been understood — not even by Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two places at once unless he is a bird.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

different question, please

adj. "Raised" instead of brought up.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. Specifically, in American history, the substitution of the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch. Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of blood, but are accounted worth it — this appraisement being made by beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed. The French revolution is of incalculable value to the Socialist of to-day; when he pulls the string actuating its bones its gestures are inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of fomenting law and order.
(also: governing people)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

a shepherd's staff held by a bishop in order to present himself as "one of the laymen"

n. excuse to take a break

interestingly at all developing countries


(also: developing countries which never developing)

The final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply — the sword, the spear and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of propulsion.

(v.) to use a valuable thing or resource carefully. to not waste it.

"[these snails] would attach themselves to a convenient branch, construct a thin, paper like front door over the mouth of the shell, and then retreat deep into its convolutions in order **to husband** the moisture in their bodies from the fierce heat of the sun." -- Birds, beasts and relatives by Gerry Durrell

See horse

A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect. One of these egotists was addressed in the lines following, by Agamemnon Melancthon Peters:

---

Dear Frank, that scrap-book where you boast
You keep a record true
Of every kind of peppered roast
That's made of you;

Wherein you paste the printed gibes
That revel round your name,
Thinking the laughter of the scribes
Attests your fame;

Where all the pictures you arrange
That comic pencils trace —
Your funny figure and your strange
Semitic face —

Pray lend it me. Wit I have not,
Nor art, but there I'll list
The daily drubbings you'd have got
Had God a fist.


(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.

---

He extracted from his quiver,
Did the controversial Roman,
An argument well fitted
To the question as submitted,
Then addressed it to the liver,
Of the unpersuaded foeman.
—Oglum P. Boomp
(also: sex)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(also: united states of america)
(also: ununited states of america )

A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth. Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable times. A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once escaped during a sermon in Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three times each. It is related in the Gesta Sanctorum that a sacristan in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of Saint Dennis in the library. Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was seeking a body of doctrine. This unseemly levity so enraged the diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the Stour and replaced by another head of Saint Dennis, brought from Rome.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

college debt

(n.) a middle tier tyrant, above school principals but below agents of the government; roughly on the same level as a landlord but ruling at a place of work rather than domestic environment.

A sack of membrane covering a multitude of sins.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

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 astride Parnassus with my lyre,
And pick with care the disobedient wire.
That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook
With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look.
I bide my time, and it shall come at length,
When, with a Titan's energy and strength,
I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O,
The world shall suffer when I let them go!
—Farquharson Harris
(also: instruments of torture)
(also: ancient instruments of torture)
(also: modern instruments of torture)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

meat from an animal that was happy to be slaughtered