series of letters of decreasing size that you could certainly memorize. Every eye chart is the same sequence, and it's only 66 letters.

(n.) a group of people that joins together in the purpose of festivity and the making of merriment. what fun!

or:

a group of people forming a political faction within the government with the intention of pushing for certain policies and platforms. not terribly fun.

(n.) activities that require discretion, secrecy, treachery, and dishonesty.

(also: politics)

Fear of humans in large quantities

(noun): The ultimate magic trick, where prices rise, and your money vanishes, and nobody knows where it went. The government and the wealthy know the secret, but they ain't telling. Inflation, the ultimate way to redistribute wealth, and make the poor, poorer and the rich, richer, all while making the masses believe it's just a natural occurrence.

Something given in expectation of something better. Today's payment for to-morrow's service.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) the weakest, least charitable way of framing an argument that you disagree with.
this form of irrationality really looks up to swiss cheese.

(also: steelman)

(n.) a quality historically defining the upper class (noblemen); considered to be roughly synonymous with grace, dignity, erudition and composure, in practice it's more shorthand for "friends in high places and doesn't have to work for a living"

separated from one's base instincts by a step of indirection.

(n.) something meant to be sat upon. one of those modern conveniences that are thankfully easy to improvise in times of shortage

(1561 – 1626) Creator of the scientific method and key figure in Scientific Revolution of the Enlightenment.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: francis bacon quotes)

Bunion of soviet union
(also: onion)

Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.

also referred to by the more proper but less euphonic title 'alice's adventures in wonderland'

a famous 1865 work of literature written by lewis carroll. despite its surrealist subject matter, some fringe literary theorists actually believe the book was not written while hopped up on hallucinogenic toads at all (mostly because all the surrealist imagery turns out to be rooted in some rather dull puns that you'll only get if you took mathematics and classics)

famed for its beloved characters, such as tweedledum and tweedledee, the walrus and the carpenter, humpty dumpty, the jabberwock, the lion and the unicorn, the red queen, the mad hatter and the march hare... which only proves how few people have actually read the damn thing, since those characters aren't in the book, they're only in the sequel, 'through the looking glass' (well, okay, the hatter and the hare are in both, and the first book at least has the white rabbit).

see also 'yellow submarine,' the book's hippie grandchild

A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots. Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and despot. Plato, doubtless, was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.
"Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of Diversiones Sanctorum, "there hath been hardly more argument than that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the abdomen — in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly' — why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who nevertheless erred in denying it immortality. He had observed that its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing. This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The Appetite whose coarse clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which firmly though civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin, anchovies, pâtés de foie gras and all such Christian comestibles shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever, and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious faith, though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly revere) will assent to its dissemination."
(also: ginger)

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

enthrallingly off-putting

A magical elixir that transforms non-morning people into semi-functioning human beings.

(interjection):
A digital chuckle emitted from the depths of the internet, signifying amusement, mild amusement, or the socially acceptable response to a mediocre joke.

n. In American society, an English tourist above the state of a costermonger, as, lord 'Aberdasher, Lord Hartisan and so forth. The traveling Briton of lesser degree is addressed as "Sir," as, Sir 'Arry Donkiboi, of 'Amstead 'Eath. The word "Lord" is sometimes used, also, as a title of the Supreme Being; but this is thought to be rather flattery than true reverence.
Miss Sallie Ann Splurge, of her own accord,

---

Wedded a wandering English lord—
Wedded and took him to dwell with her "paw,"
A parent who throve by the practice of Draw.
Lord Cadde I don't hesitate here to declare
Unworthy the father-in-legal care
Of that elderly sport, notwithstanding the truth
That Cadde had renounced all the follies of youth;
For, sad to relate, he'd arrived at the stage
Of existence that's marked by the vices of age.
Among them, cupidity caused him to urge
Repeated demands on the pocket of Splurge,
Till, wrecked in his fortune, that gentleman saw
Inadequate aid in the practice of Draw,
And took, as a means of augmenting his pelf,
To the business of being a lord himself.
His neat-fitting garments he wilfully shed
And sacked himself strangely in checks instead;
Denuded his chin, but retained at each ear
A whisker that looked like a blasted career.
He painted his neck an incarnadine hue
Each morning and varnished it all that he knew.
The moony monocular set in his eye
Appeared to be scanning the Sweet Bye-and-Bye.
His head was enroofed with a billycock hat,
And his low-necked shoes were aduncous and flat.
In speech he eschewed his American ways,
Denying his nose to the use of his A's
And dulling their edge till the delicate sense
Of a babe at their temper could take no offence.
His H's—'twas most inexpressibly sweet,
The patter they made as they fell at his feet!
Re-outfitted thus, Mr. Splurge without fear
Began as Lord Splurge his recouping career.
Alas, the Divinity shaping his end
Entertained other views and decided to send
His lordship in horror, despair and dismay
From the land of the nobleman's natural prey.
For, smit with his Old World ways, Lady Cadde
Fell—suffering Cæsar!—in love with her dad!
—G.J.
(also: royalty)
(also: loyalty)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) untrue things said for the sake of deception or convenience

(also: liar)