English language -- Dictionaries -- Humor; English language -- Semantics -- Humor; Vocabulary -- Humor
There is a land of pure delight,
Beyond the Jordan's flood,
Where saints, apparelled all in white,
Fling back the critic's mud.
And as he legs it through the skies,
His pelt a sable hue,
He sorrows sore to recognize
The missiles that he threw.
Orrin Goof
CROSS, n. An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its
significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,
but really antedating it by thousands of years. By many it has been
believed to be identical with the _crux ansata_ of the ancient phallic
worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that,
to the rites of primitive peoples. We have to-day the White Cross as
a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent
neutrality in war. Having in mind the former, the reverend Father
Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre to the effect following:
"Be good, be good!" the sisterhood
Cry out in holy chorus,
And, to dissuade from sin, parade
Their various charms before us.
But why, O why, has ne'er an eye
Seen her of winsome manner
And youthful grace and pretty face
Flaunting the White Cross banner?
Now where's the need of speech and screed
To better our behaving?
A simpler plan for saving man
(But, first, is he worth saving?)
Is, dears, when he declines to flee
From bad thoughts that beset him,
Ignores the Law as 't were a straw,
And wants to sin--don't let him.
CUI BONO? [Latin] What good would that do _me_?
CUNNING, n. The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person
from a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction
and great material adversity. An Italian proverb says: "The furrier
gets the skins of more foxes than asses."
CUPID, n. The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a
barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of
its deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is
the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual
love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the
wounds of an arrow--of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art
grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work--
this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on
the doorstep of prosperity.
CURIOSITY, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The
desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one
of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
CURSE, v.t. Energetically to belabor with a verbal slap-stick. This
is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is
commonly fatal to the victim. Nevertheless, the liability to a
cursing is a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of
life insurance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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