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diff --git a/lib/ebooks/devils/O.html b/lib/ebooks/devils/O.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ce553be6 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/devils/O.html @@ -0,0 +1,304 @@ +<?xml version="1.0"?> +<!DOCTYPE package PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Package//EN" + "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" /> +<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="devil.css" /> +<title>The Devil’s Dictionary: O</title> +</head> +<body lang="en-US"> + + +<h1>O</h1> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">oath</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In law, a +solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for +perjury.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">oblivion</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The +state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are +at rest. Fame’s eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place +where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters +without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">observatory</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">obsessed,</span> <span class="pos">p.p.</span> Vexed +by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obsession was once +more common than it is now. Arasthus tells of a peasant who was occupied by a +different devil for every day in the week, and on Sundays by two. They were +frequently seen, always walking in his shadow, when he had one, but were +finally driven away by the village notary, a holy man; but they took the +peasant with them, for he vanished utterly. A devil thrown out of a woman by +the Archbishop of Rheims ran through the trees, pursued by a hundred persons, +until the open country was reached, where by a leap higher than a church spire +he escaped into a bird. A chaplain in Cromwell’s army exorcised a soldier’s +obsessing devil by throwing the soldier into the water, when the devil came to +the surface. The soldier, unfortunately, did not.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">obsolete</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> No longer +used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has +marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool +writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally +good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer’s attitude toward +“obsolete” words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything +except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent +words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it +would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who +might not happen to be a competent reader.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">obstinate</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Inaccessible +to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy.</p> + +<p>The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most intelligent animal.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">occasional</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Afflicting us with +greater or less frequency. That, however, is not the sense in which the word is used in the phrase +“occasional verses,” which are verses written for an “occasion,” such as an anniversary, a celebration or +other event. True, they afflict us a little worse than other sorts of verse, but their name has no reference to +irregular recurrence.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">occident</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The +part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited +by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal +industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call “war” and +“commerce.” These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">ocean</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A body +of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">offensive</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Generating +disagreeable emotions or sensations, as the advance of an army against its enemy.</p> + +<p>“Were the enemy’s tactics offensive?” the king asked. “I should say so!” replied the unsuccessful +general. “The blackguard wouldn’t come out of his works!”</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">old</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> In that +stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an <i>old man</i>. Discredited by lapse of time and +offensive to the popular taste, as an <i>old</i> +book.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">“Old books? The devil take them!” Goby said.</p> +<p class="poetry">“Fresh every day must be my books and bread.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Nature herself approves the Goby rule</p> +<p class="poetry">And gives us every moment a fresh fool.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Harley Shum</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">oleginous</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Oily, +smooth, sleek.</p> + +<p>Disraeli once described the manner of Bishop Wilberforce as “unctuous, oleaginous, +saponaceous.” And the good prelate was ever afterward known as Soapy Sam. For +every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a +second skin. His enemies have only to find it.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Olympian</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Relating +to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of +yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the +presence of the tourist and his appetite.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">His name the smirking tourist scrawls</p> +<p class="poetry">Upon Minerva’s temple walls,</p> +<p class="poetry">Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,</p> +<p class="poetry">And marks his appetite’s abuse.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Averil Joop</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">omen</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A sign +that something will happen if nothing happens.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">once</span>, <span class="pos">adv.</span> Enough.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">opera</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A play +representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, +no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes. All acting is +simulation, and the word <i>simulation</i> is from <i>simia</i>, an ape; but in +opera the actor takes for his model <i>Simia audibilis</i> (or <i>Pithecanthropos +stentor</i>)—the ape that howls.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">The actor apes a man—at least in shape;</p> +<p class="poetry">The opera performer apes and ape.</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Opiate</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An +unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">opportunity</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">oppose</span>, <span class="pos">v.</span> To +assist with obstructions and objections.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">How lonely he who thinks to vex</p> +<p class="poetry">With bandinage the Solemn Sex!</p> +<p class="poetry">Of levity, Mere Man, beware;</p> +<p class="poetry">None but the Grave deserve the Unfair.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Percy P. Orminder</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">opposition</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In +politics the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.</p> + +<p>The King of Ghargaroo, who had been abroad to study the science of government, appointed +one hundred of his fattest subjects as members of a parliament to make laws for +the collection of revenue. Forty of these he named the Party of Opposition and +had his Prime Minister carefully instruct them in their duty of opposing every +royal measure. Nevertheless, the first one that was submitted passed unanimously. +Greatly displeased, the King vetoed it, informing the Opposition that if they +did that again they would pay for their obstinacy with their heads. The entire +forty promptly disemboweled themselves.</p> + +<p>“What shall we do now?” the King asked. “Liberal institutions cannot be maintained without a +party of Opposition.”</p> + +<p>“Splendor of the universe,” replied the Prime Minister, “it is true these dogs of darkness have +no longer their credentials, but all is not lost. Leave the matter to this worm of the dust.”</p> + +<p>So the Minister had the bodies of his Majesty’s Opposition embalmed and stuffed with straw, put +back into the seats of power and nailed there. Forty votes were recorded +against every bill and the nation prospered. But one day a bill imposing a tax +on warts was defeated—the members of the Government party had not been nailed +to their seats! This so enraged the King that the Prime Minister was put to +death, the parliament was dissolved with a battery of artillery, and government +of the people, by the people, for the people perished from Ghargaroo.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">optimism</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The +doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, +everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is +held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of +falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that +apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of +disproof—an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is +hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">optimist</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A proponent of the +doctrine that black is white.</p> + +<p>A pessimist applied to God for relief.</p> +<p>“Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness,” said God.</p> +<p>“No,” replied the petitioner, “I wish you to create something that would justify them.”</p> +<p>“The world is all created,” said God, “but you have overlooked something—the mortality of the optimist.”</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">oratory</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny +tempered by stenography.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">orphan</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude—a +privation appealing with a particular eloquence to all that is sympathetic in +human nature. When young the orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by +careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know +its place. It is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and +eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or scullery maid.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">orthodox</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An ox +wearing the popular religious joke.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">orthography</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The +science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear. Advocated with more heat +than light by the outmates of every asylum for the insane. They have had to +concede a few things since the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in +defence of those to be conceded hereafter.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">A spelling reformer indicted</p> +<p class="poetry">For fudge was before the court cicted.</p> +<p class="poetry">The judge said: “Enough—</p> +<p class="poetry">His candle we’ll snough,</p> +<p class="poetry">And his sepulchre shall not be whicted.”</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">ostrich</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A large +bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe in +which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The +absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been +ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">otherwise</span>, <span class="pos">adv.</span> No better.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">outcome</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +particular type of disappointment. By the kind of intelligence that sees in an +exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of an act is judged by the outcome, +the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by +the light that the doer had when he performed it.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">outdo</span>, <span class="pos">v.t.</span> To +make an enemy.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">out-of-doors</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> That +part of one’s environment upon which no government has been able to collect +taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">I climbed to the top of a mountain one day</p> +<p class="poetry">To see the sun setting in glory,</p> +<p class="poetry">And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray,</p> +<p class="poetry">Of a perfectly splendid story.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Twas about an old man and the ass he bestrode</p> +<p class="poetry">Till the strength of the beast was o’ertested;</p> +<p class="poetry">Then the man would carry him miles on the road</p> +<p class="poetry">Till Neddy was pretty well rested.</p> +<p class="poetry">The moon rising solemnly over the crest</p> +<p class="poetry">Of the hills to the east of my station</p> +<p class="poetry">Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west</p> +<p class="poetry">Like a visible new creation.</p> +<p class="poetry">And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried)</p> +<p class="poetry">Of an idle young woman who tarried</p> +<p class="poetry">About a church-door for a look at the bride,</p> +<p class="poetry">Although ‘twas herself that was married.</p> +<p class="poetry">To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand</p> +<p class="poetry">Ideas—with thought and emotion.</p> +<p class="poetry">I pity the dunces who don’t understand</p> +<p class="poetry">The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Stromboli Smith</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">ovation</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> n +ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been +disserviceable to the enemies of the nation. A lesser “triumph.” In modern +English the word is improperly used to signify any loose and spontaneous +expression of popular homage to the hero of the hour and place.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">“I had an ovation!” the actor man said,</p> +<p class="poetry">But I thought it uncommonly queer,</p> +<p class="poetry">That people and critics by him had been led</p> +<p class="poetry">By the ear.</p> +<p class="poetry">The Latin lexicon makes his absurd</p> +<p class="poetry">Assertion as plain as a peg;</p> +<p class="poetry">In “ovum” we find the true root of the word.</p> +<p class="poetry">It means egg.</p> +<p class="citeauth">Dudley Spink</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">overeat</span>, <span class="pos">v.</span> To +dine.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess, Well skilled to overeat without distress!</p> +<p class="poetry">Thy great invention, the unfatal feast,</p> +<p class="poetry">Shows Man’s superiority to Beast.</p> +<p class="citeauth">John Boop</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">overwork</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">owe</span>, <span class="pos">v.</span> To have +(and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; +it meant “own,” and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of +confusion between assets and liabilities.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">oyster</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat +without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.</p> + +</body> +</html>
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