The Devil's Dictionary (21 page)

RHADOMANCER, n. One who uses a divining-rod in prospecting for
precious metals in the pocket of a fool.

RIBALDRY, n. Censorious language by another concerning oneself.

RIBROASTER, n. Censorious language by oneself concerning another.
The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been
used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious
writers of the fifteenth century—commonly, indeed, regarded as the
founder of the Fastidiotic School.

RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular
novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the
conscience. It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine,
and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat which of the Dismal Swamp.

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property
of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the
luckless. That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the
Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid
advocacy. To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise.

RICHES, n.

A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in
whom I am well pleased."

John D. Rockefeller

The reward of toil and virtue.

J.P. Morgan

The savings of many in the hands of one.

Eugene Debs

To these excellent definitions the inspired lexicographer feels
that he can add nothing of value.

RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are
uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who
utters them. It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident.
Shaftesbury is quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth—a
ridiculous assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone
centuries of ridicule with no abatement of its popular acceptance.
What, for example, has been more valorously derided than the doctrine
of Infant Respectability?

RIGHT, n. Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right
to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have
measles, and the like. The first of these rights was once universally
believed to be derived directly from the will of God; and this is
still sometimes affirmed
in partibus infidelium
outside the
enlightened realms of Democracy; as the well known lines of Sir
Abednego Bink, following:

By what right, then, do royal rulers rule?
Whose is the sanction of their state and pow'r?
He surely were as stubborn as a mule
Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour
His uninvited session on the throne, or air
His pride securely in the Presidential chair.
Whatever is is so by Right Divine;
Whate'er occurs, God wills it so.  Good land!
It were a wondrous thing if His design
A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!
If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)
Is guilty of contributory negligence.

RIGHTEOUSNESS, n. A sturdy virtue that was once found among the
Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque. Some
feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it
into several European countries, but it appears to have been
imperfectly expounded. An example of this faulty exposition is found
in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic
passage from which is here given:

"Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of
mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to
the letter of the law.  It is not enough that one be pious and
just:  one must see to it that others also are in the same state;
and to this end compulsion is a proper means.  Forasmuch as my
injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be
wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty
to estop as to forestall mine own tort.  Wherefore if I would be
righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,
in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better
disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself restrain."

RIME, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad. The
verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull. Usually
(and wickedly) spelled "rhyme."

RIMER, n. A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
The sound surceases and the sense expires.
Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

Mowbray Myles

RIOT, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
bystanders.

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of
requiescat in pace
, attesting to
indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge,
however, the letters originally meant nothing more than
reductus in
pulvis
.

RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept
or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out
of it.

RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear
freedom, keeping off the grass.

ROAD, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is
too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.

All roads, howsoe'er they diverge, lead to Rome,
Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.

Borey the Bald

ROBBER, n.  A candid man of affairs.
It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling
companion lodged at a wayside inn.  The surroundings were suggestive,
and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn.  "Once
there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues."  Saying nothing more, he
was encouraged to continue.  "That," he said, "is the story."

ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as
They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to
probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance
it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination—free,
lawless, immune to bit and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as
Carlyle might say—a mere reporter. He may invent his characters
and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not
occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. Why he imposes
this hard condition on himself, and "drags at each remove a
lengthening chain" of his own forging he can explain in ten thick
volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle's ray the black
profound of his own ignorance of the matter. There are great novels,
for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to write them, but it
remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we
have is "The Thousand and One Nights."

ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they
too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
whole life long. It has been largely superseded by a more complex
electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is
rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.

ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In
America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically
expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

ROUNDHEAD, n. A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English
civil war—so called from his habit of wearing his hair short,
whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long. There were other
points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the
fundamental cause of quarrel. The Cavaliers were royalists because
the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair
grow than to wash his neck. This the Roundheads, who were mostly
barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal
neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation.
Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the
fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this
day beneath the snows of British civility.

RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,
literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions
lying due south from Boreaplas.

RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the
virtue of maids.

RUM, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total
abstainers.

RUMOR, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.

Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
Against my enemy no other blade.
His be the terror of a foe unseen,
His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
And nurse my valor for another foe.

Joel Buxter

RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A
Tartar Emetic.

SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God
made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the
Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this
is the Christian version: "Remember the seventh day to make thy
neighbor keep it wholly." To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient
that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early
Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of
the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious
jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is
reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water
version of the Fourth Commandment:

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the
captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine
ordinance.

SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a
priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge
that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the
Neo-Dictionarians.

SACRAMENT, n. A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of
authority and significance are attached. Rome has seven sacraments,
but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can
afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity. Some of the smaller
sects have no sacraments at all—for which mean economy they will
indubitable be damned.

SACRED, adj. Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine
character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama
of Thibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the
Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt;
the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.

All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.

Dumbo Omohundro

SANDLOTTER, n. A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of
Denis Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences
gathered in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town. True to the
traditions of his species, this leader of the proletariat was finally
bought off by his law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent
and dying impenitently rich. But before his treason he imposed upon
California a constitution that was a confection of sin in a diction of
solecisms. The similarity between the words "sandlotter" and
"sansculotte" is problematically significant, but indubitably
suggestive.

SAFETY-CLUTCH, n. A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent
the fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the
hoisting apparatus.

Once I seen a human ruin
In an elevator-well,
And his members was bestrewin'
All the place where he had fell.
And I says, apostrophisin'
That uncommon woful wreck:
"Your position's so surprisin'
That I tremble for your neck!"
Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
And impressive, up and spoke:
"Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
For it's been a fortnight broke."
Then, for further comprehension
Of his attitude, he begs
I will focus my attention
On his various arms and legs—
How they all are contumacious;
Where they each, respective, lie;
How one trotter proves ungracious,
T'other one an
alibi
.
These particulars is mentioned
For to show his dismal state,
Which I wasn't first intentioned
To specifical relate.
None is worser to be dreaded
That I ever have heard tell
Than the gent's who there was spreaded
In that elevator-well.
Now this tale is allegoric—
It is figurative all,
For the well is metaphoric
And the feller didn't fall.
I opine it isn't moral
For a writer-man to cheat,
And despise to wear a laurel
As was gotten by deceit.
For 'tis Politics intended
By the elevator, mind,
It will boost a person splendid
If his talent is the kind.
Col. Bryan had the talent
(For the busted man is him)
And it shot him up right gallant
Till his head begun to swim.
Then the rope it broke above him
And he painful come to earth
Where there's nobody to love him
For his detrimented worth.
Though he's livin' none would know him,
Or at leastwise not as such.
Moral of this woful poem:
Frequent oil your safety-clutch.

Porfer Poog

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old
calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis
de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint: "I am delighted to hear
that Monsieur de Sales is a saint. He was fond of saying indelicate
things, and used to cheat at cards. In other respects he was a
perfect gentleman, though a fool."