An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
An emotion engendered by something advantageous to one's self or disastrous to others. In the plural this word signifies those mostly artificial aids to melancholy that deepen the general gloom of existence with a particular dejection.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and devour it.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
A senseless thing that holds food without eating it.
She uttered her mind, without ceasing:
And this is the thought that it carried.
"I fear that your love is decreasing.
How is it, dear, now that we're married?"
Replied that aciduous sinner,
Fatigued of her reasonless chatter:
"When a fellow has eaten his dinner
He doesn't make love to the platter"
—Belijah H. Bimbee
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
She uttered her mind, without ceasing:
And this is the thought that it carried.
"I fear that your love is decreasing.
How is it, dear, now that we're married?"
Replied that aciduous sinner,
Fatigued of her reasonless chatter:
"When a fellow has eaten his dinner
He doesn't make love to the platter"
—Belijah H. Bimbee
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
(also: Socrates)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: Socrates)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-morality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction — prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
To carry on business candidly.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only. The Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians — who are Hogmies.
(also: humans)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: humans)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
An animal (Porcus omnivorus) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
sign-up or face the consequences!
“"observers" must obey the call.”
join