The Devil's Dictionary

name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind.

The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the

American variety (_felis pugnans_), is omnivorous and can be

taught not to talk.

Balthasar Pober

WORMS’-MEAT, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Granitarium. 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

WORSHIP, n. Homo Creator’s testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.

WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, “the wrath of God,” “the day of wrath,” etc. Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest. The Greeks before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the frying-pan of the wrath of Cryses into the fire of the wrath of Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor roasted. A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom paid the penalty with their lives. God is now Love, and a director of the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.

X

X in our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language. X is the sacred symbol of ten dollars, and in such words as Xmas, Xn, etc., stands for Christ, not, as is popular supposed, because it represents a cross, but because the corresponding letter in the Greek alphabet is the initial of his name — Xristos. If it represented a cross it would stand for St. Andrew, who “testified” upon one of that shape. In the algebra of psychology x stands for Woman’s mind. Words beginning with X are Grecian and will not be defined in this standard English dictionary.

Y

YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)

YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.

But yesterday I should have thought me blest

To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak

Of middle life and look adown the bleak

And unfamiliar foreslope to the West,

Where solemn shadows all the land invest

And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak

Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak

The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest.

Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame

To stay the shadow on the dial’s face

At manhood’s noonmark! Now, in God His name

I chide aloud the little interspace

Disparting me from Certitude, and fain

Would know the dream and vision ne’er again.

Baruch Arnegriff

It is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was attended at different times by seven doctors.

YOKE, n. An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, jugum, we owe one of the most illuminating words in our language — a word that defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy. A thousand apologies for withholding it.

YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.

Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth

again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with

whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and

clows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never

is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,

howling, is cast into Baltimost!

Polydore Smith

Z