OPTIMIST, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white. A pessimist applied to God for relief. "Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God. "No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that would justify them." "The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked something --the mortality of the optimist." |
ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography. |
ORPHAN, n. 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. |
ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude . . . |
ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious joke. |
ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear. Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every asylum for the insane. They have had to concede a few things since the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in defence of those to be conceded hereafter. A spelling reformer indicted For fudge was before the court cicted. The judge said: "Enough -- His candle we'll snough, And his sepulchre shall not be whicted." |
OSTRICH, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly. |
OTHERWISE, adv. No better. |
OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets. |
OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment. By the kind of intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of an act is judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he performed it. |
OUTDO, v.t. To make an enemy. |
OVATION, n. n ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation. A lesser "triumph." In modern English the word is improperly used to signify any loose and spontaneous expression of popular homage to the hero of the hour and place. "I had an ovation!" the actor man said, But I thought it uncommonly queer, That people and critics by him had been led By the ear. The Latin lexicon makes his absurd Assertion as plain as a peg; In "ovum" we find the true root of the word. It means egg. --Dudley Spink |
OVEREAT, v. To dine. |
OVEREAT, v. To dine. Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess, Well skilled to overeat without distress! Thy great invention, the unfatal feast, Shows Man's superiority to Beast. --John Boop |
OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities. |