The Roycroft Dictionary

T

TEACHER: 1. A person, either male or female, who instils into the head of another person, either voluntarily or for pay, the sum and substance of his or her ignorance. 2. One who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.

Talk: To open and close the mouth rapidly while the bellows in the throat pumps out the gas in the brain.

Taftian: Any man who is too cowardly to fight, and too fat to run.

Temptation: A desire to do something you know you should not do.

Theological Seminary: A place where young men are taught to silence the questions of the ignorant.

Temple: A place other than a bed, where one takes one's shoes off. (There are Jewish temples, pagan temples and money temples, but no Christian temples: the latter has no need of them, because Christian religion is the only one in the world in which its believers and followers practise exactly what its Founder taught. Each Christian may point to himself and say proudly, "Ecce Temple," hence, etc., etc., etc.)

The Philistine: A publication that puts the Syracuse Product on the terminal feathers of the Idea Bird.

The-Scene-Changes: A device invented by a writer who was running short of Cosmic Gasoline.

Tomorrow: The mother of regret.

Thanksgiving: 1. A mass said for the repose of the living. 2. Gratitude in the presence of the death of some one else. 3. The irony of fatality. 4. The instinctive and perpetual atavism of the Will-to-Live. (Thanksgiving-Day in the United States is a national holiday on which all the people who during the past year have survived earthquake, fire, housemaid's knee and death, overeat and thus thank God for His favoritism.)

Tightwadity: A disease in which one dollar obstructs the vision to the exclusion of a higher denomination.

Tolerance: An agreement to tolerate intolerance.

Today: The hearse that carries the dreams of yesterday to the cemetery.

The: An article, aristocratic by birth and breeding, but which degenerates into an adjective in the sentence, "He is THE man of the hour."

Theology: 1. A hideous juggernaut to whose wheels cling the blood and bone and the flattened flesh of a million dead emotions. 2. Not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature. 3. Obsolete psychology, or the arbitrary rule of a Theos or god. 4. An engine planned for the purpose of bewildering humanity. 5. Self-deceived egotism, hiding behind the name of Deity. 6. Antique and obsolete philosophy. 7. The science of a non-existent, all-powerful, all-wise and all-loving nix.

Thinker: 1. One who destroys philosophies. 2. One who can make others think.

Thought: 1. Something made up of the thoughts you, yourself, think. The other kind is supplied to you by jobbers. 2. Mental dynamite.

Time: 1. The press-agent of genius. 2. An eternal guest that banquets on our ideals and bodies. 3. In the theater of the gods a moving-picture film that reproduces the cosmic comedy. 4. A metaphysical entity that made the Ingersoll watch a physical possibility. 5. A loafer playing at tenpins. 6. An illusion-to orators. 7. The solvent and the dissolver of all. (Time was anciently symbolized by Kronos; today it is symbolized by the mystical syllables, So-Much-Per. The word has also undergone strange etymological changes. Anciently, time was singular, but since the advent of the Unions, we have "time and a third," "double time," etc.)

Tomb: A place for the deposit of the dead. (See College, Newspaper Office, Philadelphia Club, Legation, etc.)

Top-Notcher: An individual who works only for the interest of the institution of which he is a part, not against it.

Total Depravity: The greatest idea for the acquisition of power and pelf ever devised.

Trouble: 1. A hallucination that affords a sweet satisfaction to the possessor. 2. Any interesting topic of conversation. 3. A plan of Nature whereby a person is diverted from the humiliation of seeing himself as others see him. (An impressario's troubles begin when the prima donna kicks and the ladies of the ballet won't.)

Trumpet: A musical instrument which in the mouth of Gabriel will bring to life for their eternal undoing all Shylocks, officeholders, editorial writers, landlords, and professional epigrammatists.

Title: 1. A Pantheon of royal ciphers. 2. Anything superimposed on a superfluity.

Truth: 1. A universal error. 2. A relation between one illusion (the outer world) and another (the inner world). 3. A prejudice raised to an axiom. 4. Something that a few will die for. 5. That which serves us best in expressing our lives. (A rotting log is truth to a bed of violets; while sand is truth to a cactus.) 6. Anything which happened, might have happened, or which will possibly happen. 7. The opinion that still survives. 8. An imaginary line dividing error into two parts.

Tradition: 1. Salvation through ossification; redemption through folklore; a fetter for the foolish. 2. A clock that tells what time it was. 3. A method of holding the many back while some man does the thing which they declare is impossible.