The Roycroft Dictionary

E

EARTH 1. A small bean-shaped planet, full of noise, nonsense and noddies, created in order to swell the pockets of politicians. 2. A blister produced by the constant abrasion of motion against space.

Eat: 1. To prolong pain; to satisfy the anticipatory pleasure of hunger; to deliberately plan the contamination of the drinking-water of a people. 2. The demagogic demands of the belly. 3. A sinful or extravagant act among the destitute. 4. A sacred rite among the rich. 5. An artificial aid to conversation and the repetition of threadbare stories, generally off-color.

Education: A form of self-delusion by those who muff every good wheeze.

Economics: The science of the production, distribution and use of wealth, best understood by college professors on half-rations.

Editor: 1. A person employed on a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed. 2. A delicate instrument for observing the development and flowering of the deadly mediocre and encouraging its growth. 3. A seraphic embryon; a smooth bore; a bit of sandpaper applied to all forms of originality by the publisher-proprietor; an emictory.

Enemy: 1. A counter-irritant of which you must get a few, or it's you for fatty degeneration of the cerebrum. 2. The friend who stings you into action. 3. Any one who tells the truth about you.

Emphasis: To italicize a lie; to lay great stress on certain sounds that emanate from a larynx and that are intended to hypnotize a tympanum; to be impressive to the point of almost believing ourselves; the double chin of a declarative sentence; oratorical moth-balls.

Ennui: 1. The fourth dimension of action. 2. The looking-glass of the Infinite. 3. A state of time wherein seconds become days and hours become years. 4. A shop that contains nothing but a silent salesman, Death.

Epigram: 1. A vividly expressed truth that is so, or not, as the case may be. 2. A dash of wit and a jigger of wisdom, flavored with surprise.

Enthusiasm: The great hill-climber.

Equitable: An ironical term meaning you can fool some of the people all the time.

Equity: Simply a matter of the length of the judge's ears.

Eucharist: Salvation by the pound, or by the pint. (If one should eat, say, a pound of eucharistic chips and drink two quarts of the holy water a day, one would be cleansed of all sin and be much richer in bacteria.)

Eternity: 1. The Sunday of Time. 2. The sublimest thought of the brain of Ignorance. 3. A symphony written by a Beethoven of the ineffable x dimension. 4. The North Pole of the hours. 5. Monstrance of the Holy O. 6. A corrosive acid that obliterates Before and Afterward.

Emancipated Man: One who has dared to think for himself, and thus has added to his list of enemies.

Evolution: 1. A word that has reclassified in an entertaining manner our impermeable and eternal ignorance. 2. The growth of a thing from the simple to the complex, and the wasting away of the complex until it is simpler than ever. 3. The one superstition that is cordially hated by theologues.

Everybody: 1. The square root of zero. 2. The leavings of individuality. 3. An agglomeration of bipeds who subsist on one another's shanks. 4. The Seventh Heaven of stupidity. 5. The cosmos of the pinhead. 6. Nobody in toto. 7. The collective and organized wisdom of the lowest forms of animal intelligence.

Expectancy: An exciting interval between rounds.

Expectation: 1. An optimistic feeling about an event that will never occur. 2. The secret of the persecution of the Jews, Christians and Mohammedans by one another. 3. The Goddess of Love. Synonyms: Tomorrow, next week, next year, next century, pretty soon-any imaginary space of time after the present moment.

Existence: 1. A metaphysical term which originally meant joy, but which since the beginning of the Christian era has come to mean pain. 2. To be (used only in the phrase "to be damned"). 3. Merely to live, without eating or drinking. (In London, Paris and New York, this phenomenon is quite common.)

Experience: 1. The germ of power. 2. The name every one gives his mistakes. 3. Stinging and getting stung.

Expression: 1. That mode of creation by which we coin things out of our hearts. (Nothing is of any value except that which you create for yourself, and no joy is joy save as it is the joy of self-expression.) 2. Mind speaking through its highest instrument, Man.

Eye: 1. An organ of the human body which sees the universe as it is not, and transmits the same to the brain. 2. The soul's feelers and pickers.

Eyeball: 1. A small, miraculous globe that has the power to fabulize the external universe. 2. The spectacles of the brain; the peephole of consciousness.

Epitaph: 1. Postponed compliments. 2. Postmortem bull-con. 3. Qualifying for the Ananias Club.

European: An inhabitant of New York City.

Executive: A man who can make quick decisions and is sometimes right.