The Devil's Dictionary

H

HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.

HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.

Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell"; but a conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: "Gentlemen, somebody has been razing 'Hell' here!" Years afterward the good prelate's death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.

HAG, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind of baleful lumination or nimbus—hag being the popular name of that peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a "beautiful hag, all smiles," much as Shakespeare said, "sweet wench." It would not now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag—that compliment is reserved for the use of her grandchildren.

HALF, n. One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or considered as divided. In the fourteenth century a heated discussion arose among theologists and philosophers as to whether Omniscience could part an object into three halves; and the pious Father Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that God would demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the body of that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained the negative. Procinus, however, was spared to die of the bite of a viper.

HALO, n. Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre, or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.

HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakespeare's introducing it into the play of "Othello" is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt, as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coattails in our own day—an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.

HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of the American States his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity have recently been ordered—the first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging Jerseymen.

HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harangue-outang.

HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to the fury of the customs.

HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.

HASH, x. There is no definition for this word—nobody knows what hash is.

HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.

  "O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,
  For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.
      The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,
  With imposing rites, in the White Man's head.

John Lukkus

HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

HEAD-MONEY, n. A capitation tax, or poll-tax.

  In ancient times there lived a king
  Whose tax-collectors could not wring
  From all his subjects gold enough
  To make the royal way less rough.
  For pleasure's highway, like the dames
  Whose premises adjoin it, claims
  Perpetual repairing.  So
  The tax-collectors in a row
  Appeared before the throne to pray
  Their master to devise some way
  To swell the revenue.  "So great,"
  Said they, "are the demands of state
  A tithe of all that we collect
  Will scarcely meet them.  Pray reflect:
  How, if one-tenth we must resign,
  Can we exist on t'other nine?"
  The monarch asked them in reply:
  "Has it occurred to you to try
  The advantage of economy?"
  "It has," the spokesman said:  "we sold
  All of our gay garrotes of gold;
  With plated-ware we now compress
  The necks of those whom we assess.
  Plain iron forceps we employ
  To mitigate the miser's joy
  Who hoards, with greed that never tires,
  That which your Majesty requires."
  Deep lines of thought were seen to plow
  Their way across the royal brow.
  "Your state is desperate, no question;
  Pray favor me with a suggestion."
  "O King of Men," the spokesman said,
  "If you'll impose upon each head
  A tax, the augmented revenue
  We'll cheerfully divide with you."
  As flashes of the sun illume
  The parted storm-cloud's sullen gloom,
  The king smiled grimly.  "I decree
  That it be so—and, not to be
  In generosity outdone,
  Declare you, each and every one,
  Exempted from the operation
  Of this new law of capitation.
  But lest the people censure me
  Because they're bound and you are free,
  'Twere well some clever scheme were laid
  By you this poll-tax to evade.
  I'll leave you now while you confer
  With my most trusted minister."
  The monarch from the throne-room walked
  And straightway in among them stalked
  A silent man, with brow concealed,
  Bare-armed—his gleaming axe revealed!

G.J.

HEARSE, n. Death's baby-carriage.

HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments—a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling—tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility—these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion—4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's famous treatise on Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration.

HEAT, n.

  Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
      Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
  His point; but this I know—hot words bestowed
      With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
  And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
  Crede expertum—I have seen them, child.

Gorton Swope

HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

  "The Hebrews are heathens!" says Howison.  He's
      A Christian philosopher.  I'm
  A scurril agnostical chap, if you please,
      Addicted too much to the crime
      Of religious discussion in my rhyme.

  Though Hebrew and Howison cannot agree
      On a modus vivendi—not they!—
  Yet Heaven has had the designing of me,
      And I haven't been reared in a way
      To joy in the thick of the fray.

  For this of my creed is the soul and the gist,
      And the truth of it I aver:
  Who differs from me in his faith is an 'ist,
      And 'ite, an 'ie, or an 'er—
      And I'm down upon him or her!

  Let Howison urge with perfunctory chin
      Toleration—that's all very well,
  But a roast is "nuts" to his nostril thin,
      And he's running—I know by the smell—
      A secret and personal Hell!

Bissell Gip

HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.

HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation.

HELPMATE, n. A wife, or bitter half.

  "Now, why is yer wife called a helpmate, Pat?"
      Says the priest.  "Since the time 'o yer wooin'
  She's niver assisted in what ye were at—
      For it's naught ye are ever doin'."

  "That's true of yer Riverence," Patrick replies,
      And no sign of contrition envinces;
  "But, bedad, it's a fact which the word implies,
      For she helps to mate the expinses!"

Marley Wottel

HEMP, n. A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

HERS, pron. His.

HIBERNATE, v.i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean that it had to try twice before it can cast a shadow. Three or four centuries ago, in England, no fact was better attested than that swallows passed the winter months in the mud at the bottom of their brooks, clinging together in globular masses. They have apparently been compelled to give up the custom on account of the foulness of the brooks. Sotus Ecobius discovered in Central Asia a whole nation of people who hibernate. By some investigators, the fasting of Lent is supposed to have been originally a modified form of hibernation, to which the Church gave a religious significance; but this view was strenuously opposed by that eminent authority, Bishop Kip, who did not wish any honors denied to the memory of the Founder of his family.

HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.

HISTORIAN, n. A broad-gauge gossip.

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

  Of Roman history, great Niebuhr's shown
  'Tis nine-tenths lying.  Faith, I wish 'twere known,
  Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide,
  Wherein he blundered and how much he lied.

Salder Bupp

HOG, n. A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and serving to illustrate that of ours. Among the Mahometans and Jews, the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for the delicacy and the melody of its voice. It is chiefly as a songster that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus has been known to draw tears from two persons at once. The scientific name of this dicky-bird is Porcus Rockefelleri. Mr. Rockefeller did not discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance.

HOMOEOPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.

HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another—the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

  So skilled the parson was in homiletics
  That all his normal purges and emetics
  To medicine the spirit were compounded
  With a most just discrimination founded
  Upon a rigorous examination
  Of tongue and pulse and heart and respiration.
  Then, having diagnosed each one's condition,
  His scriptural specifics this physician
  Administered—his pills so efficacious
  And pukes of disposition so vivacious
  That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam
  Were convalescent ere they knew they had 'em.
  But Slander's tongue—itself all coated—uttered
  Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered
  That in the case of patients having money
  The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.

Biography of Bishop Potter

HONORABLE, adj. Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."

HOPE, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one.

  Delicious Hope! when naught to man is left—
  Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;
  When even his dog deserts him, and his goat
  With tranquil disaffection chews his coat
  While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,
  The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,
  Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint
  The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.

Fogarty Weffing

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

HOSTILITY, n. A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth's overpopulation. Hostility is classified as active and passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.

HOURI, n. A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul. By that good lady the Houris are said to be held in deficient esteem.

HOUSE, n. A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe. House of Correction, a place of reward for political and personal service, and for the detention of offenders and appropriations. House of God, a building with a steeple and a mortgage on it. House-dog, a pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult persons passing by and appal the hardy visitor. House-maid, a youngerly person of the opposing sex employed to be variously disagreeable and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has pleased God to place her.

HOUSELESS, adj. Having paid all taxes on household goods.

HOVEL, n. The fruit of a flower called the Palace.

      Twaddle had a hovel,
          Twiddle had a palace;
      Twaddle said:  "I'll grovel
          Or he'll think I bear him malice"—
  A sentiment as novel
      As a castor on a chalice.

      Down upon the middle
          Of his legs fell Twaddle
      And astonished Mr. Twiddle,
          Who began to lift his noddle.
      Feed upon the fiddle-
          Faddle flummery, unswaddle
  A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]

G.J.

HUMANITY, n. The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.

HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick.

  Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind
  See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined—
  Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray,
  His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day.
  He thinks, admitted to an equal sty,
  A graceful hog would bear his company.

Alexander Poke

HURRICANE, n. An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain old-fashioned sea-captains. It is also used in the construction of the upper decks of steamboats, but generally speaking, the hurricane's usefulness has outlasted it.

HURRY, n. The dispatch of bunglers.

HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.

HYBRID, n. A pooled issue.

HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.

HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that.

HYPOCHONDRIASIS, n. Depression of one's own spirits.

  Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot
  Where long the village rubbish had been shot
  Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps—
  "Hypochondriasis."  It meant The Dumps.

Bogul S. Purvy

HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.