(n.) a celebration held on the day of one's birth meant to congratulate them on not biting the big one yet (see death).

The finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Grantarium. Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by contrast the foreknown futility.

---

Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
How profitless the labor you bestow
Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
The tenant neither can admire nor know.

Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
By shouldering asunder all the stones
In what to you would be a moment's span.

Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
That when your marble is all dust, arise,
If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn —
You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.

What though of all man's works your tomb alone
Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
Would it advantage you to dwell therein
Forever as a stain upon a stone?
—Joel Huck
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

---

The rising People, hot and out of breath,
Roared round the palace: "Liberty or death!"
"If death will do," the King said, "let me reign;
You'll have, I'm sure, no reason to complain."
—Martha Braymance

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his appetite.

---

His name the smirking tourist scrawls
Upon Minerva's temple walls,
Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,
And marks his appetite's abuse.
—Averil Joop

Adding two-digit numbers is like combining two groups of friends. Imagine you have 47 friends in one group and 69 friends in another group. To find out how many friends you have in total, you count the friends from each group separately. You count 4 tens from the first group and 6 tens from the second group, which gives you 10 tens. Then, you count the 7 ones from the first group and 9 ones from the second group, which gives you 16 ones. So, when you add the tens and ones together, you have 10 tens and 16 ones, which equals 116 friends in total!

(also: Subtracting two-digit numbers)
(also: Counting and making change with money)
(also: Measuring and converting units of length)

a belief that Jesus will return for 1000 years of paradise, after which He will say "that was great, but I gotta go", leaving us to spend the rest of eternity in our wretched godlessness.

(n.) sadness which has an almost crippling effect

probably the force that led you to this online dictionary

Well, I'm not telling *you...*

Calepine of Obloquy, Flippancy, & Lampoonery
https://www.wordnik.com/words/calepine

Noun /ˈlɛmən/

A fruit that looks innocent enough on the outside, but is often a sour disappointment on the inside. A favorite of used car salesmen and con artists everywhere, it has the power to turn a dream into a nightmare with a single turn of the key.

(also: marriage)

Self imposed torture to gain more knowledge in an area just to fail miserably the very next day on the test

(n.) the red-tinted stepchild of precious metals, a mutt born of wanton copper and petulant, abrasive tin.

ever in the shadow of its more accomplished siblings gold and silver, bronze lived an unromantic yet functional existence as a material for weaponcrafting, until it reached high school in the 13th century and was bullied out of existence by steel

A mostly empty frozen waste Land with a few dozen people scattered around the southern edges.

(also: australia)

(n.) a cucumber that has been mummified in vinegar brine and packaged in an ornate sarcophagus

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself”
― D.H. Lawrence

One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a special kind of grown-up root beer that quenches the sweltering fires in both your throat and your loins

for some reason quite popular among cowboys in the movies. well. "some" reason.

A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes. All acting is simulation, and the word simulation is from simia, an ape; but in opera the actor takes for his model Simia audibilis (or Pithecanthropos stentor) — the ape that howls.

---

The actor apes a man — at least in shape;
The opera performer apes an ape.
(also: the devil's dictionary)

A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it
(also: error)

n. The activity of a tongue that has no ears.
(also: humans)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)