English language -- Dictionaries -- Humor; English language -- Semantics -- Humor; Vocabulary -- Humor
Insurance Agent: I will not deny it--but look at the figures in this
pamph--
House Owner: Heaven forbid! Insurance Agent: You spoke of saving the
premiums which you would otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more
likely to squander them? We offer you an incentive to thrift.
House Owner: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is not
peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you command
esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a Deserving Object.
INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to
substitute misrule for bad government.
INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of
influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence,
immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is
governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of
letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy
results from the zeal of many worthy persons to keep it warm.
INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for
their mutual destruction.
Two Seidlitz powders, one in blue
And one in white, together drew,
And having each a pleasant sense
Of t' other powder's excellence,
Forsook their jackets for the snug
Enjoyment of a common mug.
So close their intimacy grew
One paper would have held the two.
To confidences straight they fell,
Less anxious each to hear than tell;
Then each remorsefully confessed
To all the virtues he possessed,
Acknowledging he had them in
So high degree it was a sin.
The more they said, the more they felt
Their spirits with emotion melt,
Till tears in cataracts expressed
Their feelings. Then they effervesced!
So Nature executes her feats
Of wrath on friends and sympathetes
The good old rule who won't apply,
That you are you and I am I.
INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the
gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The
introduction attains in this country its most malevolent development,
being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every American
being the equal of every other American, it follows that everybody has
the right to know everybody else, which implies the right to introduce
without request or permission. The Declaration of Independence should
have read thus:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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