The Devil’s Dictionary994 terms |
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W2
- Wheat
- n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.
- White
- adj. and n. Black.
- Widow
- n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ’s tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.
- Wine
- n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women’s Christian Union as “liquor,” sometimes as “rum.” Wine, madam, is God’s next best gift to man.
- Wit
- n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
- Witch
- n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
- Witticism
- n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a “joke.”
- Woman
- n.
An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a
Balthasar Pober
rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by
many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility
acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the
postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion,
deny the virtue and declare that such as creation’s dawn beheld,
it roareth now. The species is the most widely distributed of all
beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from
Greeland’s spicy mountains to India’s moral strand. The popular
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. - 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
Joel Huck
Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
Would it advantage you to dwell therein
Forever as a stain upon a stone?