Suddenly to change one’s opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.
LIAR, n. One who tells an unpleasant truth.
OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.
POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.
Aristocrats: n. fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts – guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.
INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman.
INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.
RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
RIMER, n. A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.
PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.
WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.
OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame’s eternal dumping ground.
DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead – a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.
SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.
Book – Learning : The dunce’s derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.
MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.
PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable – omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.
ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.