The Roycroft Dictionary

M

MANKIND: 1. A nomadic savage that has wandered over the face of the earth from East to West in order to reach the East so it could go West again. It has left many traces of its life-barrooms, brothels, jails, churches, gallows, best sellers, etc. 2. In the animal kingdom, a surreptitious and supposititious supererogation. 3. Among the Simians a place equivalent to our hell. "Oh, you go to Mankind," is quite frequently heard in the African jungle, even in the best society.

Mahin: A jumbo of publicity who puts it over.

Mental Dissolution: That condition where you are perfectly satisfied with your religion, education and government.

Man: 1. A super-simian. 2. Holy dicebox of the devil. 3. God's scrapbook. 4. Anything allowed to stand at a public bar. 5. A biped with feathers in his or her hat. 6. A being said to be the highest work of God-and who admits it. 7. Any creature that creates a Creator in his own image. 8. A god in the crib.

Man-Hater: A woman who, finding herself no longer acceptable to man, flirts with Mephisto.

Marriage: 1. A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite s*x solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other for ninety-nine years, or until death do them join. 2. A way-station, not the end of the journey. 3. The aspiration of two vowels to be a diphthong. 4. Love's demitasse.

Mayor: 1. Particeps criminis. 2. The head and front of our offending. 3. Polonius Pecksniff, who plays Bottom for a stipend. 4. A chaste, honorable, virtuous person whose private life is made inviolable by the libel laws. 5. A prickly sensation in the back of Folly and Revelry. 6. The culmination, zenith, equator and pediment of self-sufficient mediocrity. 7. A crow's-nest from which one may see the perpetually receding horizons of the Governorship and the Presidency. 8. A chef of morality. 9. Any person afflicted with primary, secondary or tertiary holiness. 10. A palm-reader. 11. A nebulous cluster of thought-embryons resolved into a gaseous state. 12. The nosebag of public decency. 13. The alter ego of organized cant. 14. The critic of impure reason. 15. Lobster emeritus. 16. A person who takes an oath to love, honor and obey Tartuffe.

Manholes: The apertures in a peekaboo shirtwaist.

Martyr: Any man who is willing to sacrifice others for his "cause."

Master-Man: A man who is master of one person-himself.

Mastership: Industry, concentration, self-confidence.

Mathematics: A tentative agreement that two and two make four.

Matteawan: The antechamber of liberty for a murder-gent.

Militarism: A fever for conquest, with Peace for a shield, using music and brass buttons to dazzle and divert the Populace.

Mercy: 1. The charity of tyrants. 2. The forgiveness of one scoundrel by another. 3. The culmination of the Will-to-Power and its final apotheosis. 4. A quality which, like soup, the more it is strained the less soup and the more water you have. 5. In war a universal mode of subjugating a people.

Mephisto: The fourth person in the Holy Trinity.

Militancy: A fixed, fighting mental attitude that will never know when the war is over.

Midnight: 1. The Pole of the hours; a pincushion on which sparkle all the seconds of a day; the keel of the good ship Tomorrow. 2. A chimney whence the dreams of today issue in smoke.

Metaphysics: 1. An attempt to define a thing and by so doing escape the bother of understanding it. 2. The explanation of a thing by a person who does not understand it.

Middleman: One who works both ends against the middle.

Millennium: 1. A thousand years beginning with Now and ending with Then. 2. A mythical period when every one will pay his debts and begin tomorrow again on renewed credit. 3. A religious cycle which has no visible means of support, even admitting the ideality of time. Hence, by extension and usage-[Here insert a Mergenthaler pi line of thirty-two ems.]

Mammon: The Pope of Protestantism.

Muckraker: One who sits on the fence and defames American enterprise as it marches by.

Miracle: 1. A happening seen by four men at once, but by no one man in particular-hence, a collective, but otherwise untrue, fact. 2. The minuti of cosmologies. 3. A physical event described by those to whom it was related by men who did not see it. 4. A portent that precedes the coming of a Liar with letters patent from Nowhere, or a series of extraordinary occurrences that attend his comings and goings and mouthings that in no way equal in majesty, beauty or mystery the simplest commonplace of his life. (No god, demigod, or other parasite of human ignorance is complete without miracles, for it is only the natural and commonplace that are unbelievable.)

Motherhood: The headliner in God's great vaudeville.

Missionaries: Sincere, self-deceived persons suffering from meddler's itch.

Mistress: 1. A female who has rights, as distinguished from a married woman, who has duties. 2. One whose respect and love some married men may hold without the non-transferable license in the bottom of a trunk.

Martyrdom: The sweet apotheosis of the things we do not care to avoid.

Minute: 1. The crutch on which the Hour leans as it limps into Eternity. 2. A space of time in which we dream of something that will never come true, or form a resolution that another minute effaces.

Modesty: 1. A beau-catcher that young ladies wear and women affect. 2. In a sweetmeat, the souffle through which we dig to reach the plums. 3. The blush on the face of Desire at the consciousness of its own immodesty. 4. Among men modesty is the will-to-wait and seize. 5. Venom, who sidles into corners and shuns the limelight, so that he may the better see. 6. The attitude of mind that precedes the pounce. 7. The subtlest symptom of paranoia. 8. Egotism turned wrong side out.

Mummy: 1. An unobjectionable party whose motives are not questioned. 2. One who is not in business for his health. 3. Any one who does not advertise.

Morality: 1. The formaldehyde of theology. 2. The line of conduct that pays.

Moralist: 1. A beautified eunuch. 2. One self-elected to make the stupid more stupid. 3. Any one skilled in the science of pornography. 4. A retired roue. 5. One of the Sacred Legion of Coprolitis.

Morgue: The pantheon of the unremembered; Death's shop-window.

Munsey: 1. Any publisher who does much business on small mental capital. 2. Verb: To munsey-to print much and say nothing. 3. A literary laxative. 4. To put up money for a monkey monarchy.

Murderer: 1. A savior of society. Synonyms: Soldier, hangman, doctor. 2. A man born ahead of or after his time.

Music: 1. Anything that has charms to soothe a savage beast. 2. Unnecessary noises heard in restaurants and cheap hotels. 3. The only one of the arts that can not be prostituted to a base use. 4. An attempt to express the emotions that are beyond speech. 5. A noise less objectionable than any other noise.

Mystic: 1. One who guzzles his God. 2. A person who is puzzled before the obvious, but who understands the non-existent. 3. To stand over the vasty deep to summon monsters and slip in. 4. Sap that has lost its way. 5. A gymnast who turns flip-flops between the Here and the Not-Here. (Plato was the first mystic. It was he who announced the discovery of the Non-Existent. Hegel was the last mystic, for it was he who proved the Non-Existent was and was not, might have been and never could be, has was, is now, and never shall be.)