ALDERMAN, n. An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretence of open marauding. |
ALIEN, n. An American sovereign in his probationary state. |
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. |
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher. |
ALLAH, n. The Mahometan Supreme Being, as distinguished from the Christian, Jewish, and so forth. Allah's good laws I faithfully have kept, And ever for the sins of man have wept; And sometimes kneeling in the temple I Have reverently crossed my hands and slept. --Junker Barlow |
ALLEGIANCE, n. This thing Allegiance, as I suppose, Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose, Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed To smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed. --G.J. |
ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third. |
ALLIGATOR, n. The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World. Herodotus says the Indus is, with one exception, the only river that produces crocodiles, but they appear to have gone West and grown up with the other rivers. From the notches on his back the alligator is called a sawrian. |
ALONE, adj. In bad company. In contact, lo! the flint and steel, By spark and flame, the thought reveal That he the metal, she the stone, Had cherished secretly alone. --Booley Fito |
ALTAR, n. The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female tool. They stood before the altar and supplied The fire themselves in which their fat was fried. In vain the sacrifice! --no god will claim An offering burnt with an unholy flame. --M.P. Nopput |
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. |
AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. |
AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish. |
An egotist is a person of low taste-more interested in himself than in me. |
An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization. |