ground

trustycoffeemug
(n.) 1) the broad, flat thing that would kill you if you fell from a great height. the thing you are most likely standing on whenever gravity works as intended; 2) the dead remains of coffee

(v.) 1) to confine a young person to their room, as punishment for misbehavior; 2) to confine electric currents to an equalized surface, as punishment for trying to zap people

ground is a lot of things, it transpires.

tree

the devils dictionary
A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear only a negligible fruit, or none at all. When naturally fruited, the tree is a beneficent agency of civilization and an important factor in public morals. In the stern West and the sensitive South its fruit (white and black respectively), though not eaten, is agreeable to the public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general welfare. That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following passage from Morryster, who antedated him by two centuries:

While in yt londe I was carried to see ye Ghogo tree, whereof I had hearde moch talk; but sayynge yt I saw naught remarkabyll in it, ye hed manne of ye villayge where it grewe made answer as followeth:
"Ye tree is not nowe in fruite, but in his seasonne you shall see dependynge fr. his braunches all soch as have affroynted ye King his Majesty."

And I was furder tolde yt ye worde "Ghogo" sygnifyeth in yr tong ye same as "rapscal" in our owne.
—Trauvells in ye Easte
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

lapidate

the devils dictionary
v.t. To rebuke with stones. St. Stephen, for example, was lapidated like a Chinaman.

Lamented St. Steve,
What Christian can grieve
For the way that you came to your death?
For the monument fair
Of memorial stones
Was reared in the air
O'er your honored bones
Ere yet you'd relinquished your breath.
No doubt as your soul exhaled
You were thanked by resolution;
For the builders' design had failed
Except for your execution.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

sabbath

the devils dictionary
A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian version: "Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it wholly." To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the Fourth Commandment:

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine ordinance.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

zoology

the devils dictionary
The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoölogy was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us. Two of the science's most illustrious expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we learn (L'Histoire générale des animaux and A History of Animated Nature) that the domestic cow sheds its horns every two years.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

family

victor von lichtenstein
N. A group that shares similar genetic material via sexual reproduction. With the parental beings usually (except in Alabama) originating from different familial units
(also: alabama)
(also: problem of alabama)
(also: family bussinesses in alabama)

2. N. In case the first definition is full of crazy, hateful, or downright evil people and one gets disowned (whether by choice or not) the discarded individual will usually seek to build their own more perfect version by choosing different people/things/animals to surround themselves with.

indira gandhi

trustycoffeemug
(1971-1984)

the second most famous indian person named gandhi to be assassinated. india's first female prime minister, famous for getting the country mixed up in a war with pakistan and for testing huge-ass nuclear weapons in the indian desert. one suspects she was in margaret thatcher's book club

eventually killed by her own sikh bodyguards in 1984, which got the rest of india very upset with the sikhs. and so the wheel of human intrigue turns onward.

orphan

the devils dictionary
A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude — a privation appealing with a particular eloquence to all that is sympathetic in human nature. When young the orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place. It is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or scullery maid.

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