The Devil's Dictionary

T, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet, was by the Greeks absurdly called tau.  In the alphabet whence ours comes it had the form of the rude corkscrew of the period, and when it stood alone (which was more than the Phoenicians could always do) signified Tallegal, translated by the learned Dr. Brownrigg, “tanglefoot.”

TABLE D’HOTE, n.  A caterer’s thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.

  Old Paunchinello, freshly wed,
      Took Madam P. to table,
  And there deliriously fed
      As fast as he was able.

  “I dote upon good grub,” he cried,
      Intent upon its throatage. 
  “Ah, yes,” said the neglected bride,
      “You’re in your table d’hotage.”

Associated Poets

TAIL, n.  The part of an animal’s spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail should be, and indubitably once was.  This tendency is most observable in the female of the species, in whom the ancestral sense is strong and persistent.  The tailed men described by Lord Monboddo are now generally regarded as a product of an imagination unusually susceptible to influences generated in the golden age of our pithecan past.

TAKE, v.t.  To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.

TALK, v.t.  To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.

TARIFF, n.  A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

  The Enemy of Human Souls
  Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
  For Hell had been annexed of late,
  And was a sovereign Southern State.

  “It were no more than right,” said he,
  “That I should get my fuel free. 
  The duty, neither just nor wise,
  Compels me to economize —­
  Whereby my broilers, every one,
  Are execrably underdone. 
  What would they have? —­ although I yearn
  To do them nicely to a turn,
  I can’t afford an honest heat. 
  This tariff makes even devils cheat! 
  I’m ruined, and my humble trade
  All rascals may at will invade: 
  Beneath my nose the public press
  Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
  The bar ingeniously applies
  To my undoing my own lies;
  My medicines the doctors use
  (Albeit vainly) to refuse
  To me my fair and rightful prey
  And keep their own in shape to pay;
  The preachers by example teach
  What, scorning to perform, I teach;
  And statesmen, aping me, all make
  More promises than they can break. 
  Against such competition I
  Lift up a disregarded cry. 
  Since all ignore my just complaint,
  By Hokey-Pokey!  I’ll turn saint!”
  Now, the Republicans, who all
  Are saints, began at once to bawl
  Against his competition; so
  There was a devil of a go! 
  They locked horns with him, tete-a-tete
  In acrimonious debate,
  Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
  Had hopes of coming by their own. 
  That evil to avert, in haste
  The two belligerents embraced;
  But since ’twere wicked to relax
  A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
  ’Twas finally agreed to grant
  The bold Insurgent-protestant
  A bounty on each soul that fell
  Into his ineffectual Hell.

Edam Smith

TECHNICALITY, n.  In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder.  His exact words were:  “Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder.”  The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.

TEDIUM, n.  Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored.  Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source —­ the first words of the ancient Latin hymn Te Deum Laudamus.  In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.

TEETOTALER, n.  One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.

TELEPHONE, n.  An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

TELESCOPE, n.  A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details.  Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.

TENACITY, n.  A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to the coin of the realm.  It attains its highest development in the hand of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in politics.  The following illustrative lines were written of a Californian gentleman in high political preferment, who has passed to his accounting: 

  Of such tenacity his grip
  That nothing from his hand can slip. 
  Well-buttered eels you may o’erwhelm
  In tubs of liquid slippery-elm
  In vain —­ from his detaining pinch
  They cannot struggle half an inch! 
  ’Tis lucky that he so is planned
  That breath he draws not with his hand,
  For if he did, so great his greed
  He’d draw his last with eager speed. 
  Nay, that were well, you say.  Not so
  He’d draw but never let it go!

THEOSOPHY, n.  An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.  The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become.  To be absolutely wise and good —­ that is perfection; and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection.  Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year.  The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.

TIGHTS, n.  An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.  Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss Lillian Russell’s refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of ingenuity and sustained reflection.  It was Miss Hall’s belief that nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs.  This theory was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation!  It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell’s aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what was known among the ancients as “modesty.”  The nature of that sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us.  The study of lost arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts themselves recovered.  This is an epoch of renaissances, and there is ground for hope that the primitive “blush” may be dragged from its hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the stage.

TOMB, n.  The House of Indifference.  Tombs are now by common consent invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them, the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be innocently “glened” as soon as its occupant is done “smellynge,” the soul being then all exhaled.  This reasonable view is now generally accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has been greatly dignified.

TOPE, v.  To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig.  In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are in the forefront of civilization and power.  When pitted against the hard-drinking Christians the abstemious Mahometans go down like grass before the scythe.  In India one hundred thousand beef-eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race.  With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate Spaniard out of his possessions!  From the time when the Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every conquered port it has been the same way:  everywhere the nations that drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too righteously.  Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially augmented the nation’s military power.

TORTOISE, n.  A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso: