The Devil's Dictionary

William Bryan, he has Caught It,

Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

Is’t the sandhill crane, the shankank,

Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,

Standing silent in the kneedeep

With his wing-tips crossed behind him

And his neck close-reefed before him,

With his bill, his william, buried

In the down upon his bosom,

With his head retracted inly,

While his shoulders overlook it?

Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,

Shiver grayly in the north wind,

Wishing he had died when little,

As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?

No ‘tis not the Shankank standing,

Standing in the gray and dismal

Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.

No, ‘tis peerless William Bryan

Realizing that he’s Caught It,

Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

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

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.

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,