Ability: The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones.

Absurdity: a statement of belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Boundary: In political geography, and imaginary line between two nations separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think.

Bride:  a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

Cat: a soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

Cemetery: an isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target, and stone-cutters spell for a wager.

Circus: a place where horses, ponies, and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting like fools.

Confidant:  One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided to him by C.

Consult:  To seek anther’s approval of a course already decided on.

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

Fork: an instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

Friendship: a hips big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

Guillotine: a machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders....with good reason.

Hag: An elderly woman whom you do not happen to like.

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

House: a hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.

Imagination: a warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

Kill: to create a vacancy without nominating a successor.

Marriage: The state or condition of a community that consists of a Master and a Mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Mine: Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.

Monkey: an arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.

Novel: A short story padded.

Ocean: a body of water occupying two thirds of a world made for man---who has no gills.

Pedestrian: The variable and audible part of the roadway for an automobile.

Philosophy: a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Phonograph: an irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

Plagiarize: to take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.

Prehistoric: Belong to an earlier period and a museum.

Present:  the part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

Property: any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B.

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance, the nature of the Unknowable.

Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, fortune, Luck, or one’s neighbor.

Tsetse Fly: an African insect whose bite is commonly regarded as nature’s most efficacious remedy for insomnia.