I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its plural is said to be We , but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but fine. The frank yet graceful use of " I " distinguishes a good writer from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to cloak his loot.
ICHOR, n.
A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of
blood.
ICONOCLAST, n.
A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are imperfectly
gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest that
he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but
pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in
place of those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But
the iconoclast saith: "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need
them not; and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I
will depress the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk
it."
IDIOT, n.
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's
activity is not confined to any special field of thought or
action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last
word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the
fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech
and circumscribes conduct with a dead- line.
IDLENESS, n.
A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins
and promotes the growth of staple vices.
IGNORAMUS, n.
A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar
to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing
about.
ILLUMINATI, n.
A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the sixteenth
century; so called because they were light weights-- cunctationes illuminati.
ILLUSTRIOUS, adj.
Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and
detraction.
IMAGINATION, n.
A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
IMBECILITY, n.
A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting
censorious critics of this dictionary.
IMMIGRANT, n.
An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than
another.
IMMODEST, adj.
Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with a feeble
conception of worth in others.
IMMORAL, adj.
Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the
greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient
comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If man's notions
of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency;
if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way;
if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and
nowise dependent on, their consequences-- then all philosophy is
a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
IMPARTIAL, adj.
Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
IMPENITENCE, n.
A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and
punishment.
IMPIETY, n.
Your irreverence toward my deity.
IMPOSITION, n.
The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on of hands--
a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but performed
with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.
IMPOSTOR, n.
A rival aspirant to public honors.
IMPROVIDENCE, n.
Provision for the needs of to- day from the revenues of
to- morrow.
IMPUNITY, n.
Wealth.
INADMISSIBLE, adj.
Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of
testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted
with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings
before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because
the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for
examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political,
commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on
hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any
other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay
evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only
the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly
established and who are not known to have been sworn in any
sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this
country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any
evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that
the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as
person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.But as records
of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that
powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge
to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which
certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions
based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any
existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges
of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If
there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike
destitute of value.
INAUSPICIOUSLY, adv.
In an unpromising manner, the auspices being
unfavorable. Among the Romans it was customary before undertaking
any important action or enterprise to obtain from the augurs, or
state prophets, some hint of its probable outcome; and one of
their favorite and most trustworthy modes of divination consisted
in observing the flight of birds-- the omens thence derived
being called auspices. Newspaper reporters and certain
miscreant lexicographers have decided that the word-- always in
the plural-- shall mean "patronage" or "management"; as, "The
festivities were under the auspices of the Ancient and Honorable
Order of Body- Snatchers"; or, "The hilarities were auspicated by
the Knights of Hunger."
INCOME, n.
The natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability,
the commonly accepted standards being artificial, arbitrary and
fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the play has
justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in
whatsoever it consisteth-- coins, or land, or houses, or
merchant- stuff, or anything which may be named as holden of
right to one's own subservience) as also of honors, titles,
preferments and place, and all favor and acquaintance of persons
of quality or ableness, are but to get money. Hence it followeth
that all things are truly to be rated as of worth in measure of
their serviceableness to that end; and their possessors should
take rank in agreement thereto, neither the lord of an
unproducing manor, howsoever broad and ancient, nor he who bears
an unremunerate dignity, nor yet the pauper favorite of a king,
being esteemed of level excellency with him whose riches are of
daily accretion; and hardly should they whose wealth is barren
claim and rightly take more honor than the poor and
unworthy."
INCOMPATIBILITY, n.
In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for
domination. Incompatibility may, however, consist of a meek- eyed
matron living just around the corner. It has even been known to
wear a moustache.
INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj.
Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are
incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of
them, but not enough for both-- as Walt Whitman's poetry and
God's mercy to man. Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only
incompatibility let loose. Instead of such low language as "Go
heel yourself-- I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir,
we are incompossible," would convey and equally significant
intimation and in stately courtesy are altogether superior.
INCUBUS, n.
One of a race of highly improper demons who, though probably not
wholly extinct, may be said to have seen their best nights.
INCUMBENT, n.
A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
INDECISION, n.
The chief element of success; "for whereas," saith Sir Thomas
Brewbold, "there is but one way to do nothing and divers way to
do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it
followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so
many chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards"-- a
most clear and satisfactory exposition on the matter.
INDIFFERENT, adj.
Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
INDIGESTION, n.
A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake
for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of
mankind. As the simple Red Man of the western wild put it, with,
it must be confessed, a certain force: "Plenty well, no pray; big
bellyache, heap God."
INDISCRETION, n.
The guilt of woman.
INEXPEDIENT, adj.
Not calculated to advance one's interests.
INFANCY, n.
The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon
afterward.
INFERIAE, n.[Latin]
Among the Greeks and Romans, sacrifices for propitation
of the Dii Manes, or souls of the dead heroes; for the
pious ancients could not invent enough gods to satisfy their
spiritual needs, and had to have a number of makeshift deities,
or, as a sailor might say, jury- gods, which they made out of the
most unpromising materials. It was while sacrificing a bullock to
the spirit of Agamemnon that Laiaides, a priest of Aulis, was
favored with an audience of that illustrious warrior's shade, who
prophetically recounted to him the birth of Christ and the
triumph of Christianity, giving him also a rapid but tolerably
complete review of events down to the reign of Saint Louis. The
narrative ended abruptly at the point, owing to the inconsiderate
crowing of a cock, which compelled the ghosted King of Men to
scamper back to Hades.
INFIDEL, n.
In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion;
in Constantinople, one who does.
INFLUENCE, n.
In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a
substantial quid.
INFALAPSARIAN, n.
One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have sinned
unless he had a mind to-- in opposition to the Supralapsarians,
who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the
beginning. Infralapsarians are sometimes called Sublapsarians
without material effect upon the importance and lucidity of their
views about Adam.
INGRATE, n.
One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an
object of charity.
INJURY, n.
An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.
INJUSTICE, n.
A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry
ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the
back.
INK, n.
A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum- arabic and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and
promote intellectual crime. The properties of ink are peculiar
and contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake
them; to blacken them and to make them white; but it is most
generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together
the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal
afterward the rascal quality of the material. There are men
called journalists who have established ink baths which some
persons pay money to get into, others to get out of. Not
infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid to get in pays
twice as much to get out.
INNATE, adj.
Natural, inherent-- as innate ideas, that is to say, ideas that
we are born with, having had them previously imparted to us. The
doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths of
philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore
inaccessible to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself
to have given it "a black eye." Among innate ideas may be
mentioned the belief in one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in
the greatness of one's country, in the superiority of one's
civilization, in the importance of one's personal affairs and in
the interesting nature of one's diseases.
IN'ARDS, n.
The stomach, heart, soul and other bowels. Many eminent
investigators do not class the soul as an in'ard, but that acute
observer and renowned authority, Dr. Gunsaulus, is persuaded that
the mysterious organ known as the spleen is nothing less than our
important part. To the contrary, Professor Garrett P. Servis
holds that man's soul is that prolongation of his spinal marrow
which forms the pith of his no tail; and for demonstration of his
faith points confidently to the fact that no tailed animals have
no souls. Concerning these two theories, it is best to suspend
judgment by believing both.
INSCRIPTION, n.
Something written on another thing. Inscriptions are of many
kinds, but mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame of
some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages the record
of his services and virtues. To this class of inscriptions
belongs the name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington
monument. Following are examples of memorial inscriptions on
tombstones:
"In the sky my soul is found,
And my body in the ground.
By and by my body'll rise
To my spirit in the skies,
Soaring up to Heaven's gate.
1878."
"Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree. Cut down May 9th,
1862,
aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds. Indigenous."
"Affliction sore long time she boar,
Phisicians was in vain,
Till Deth released the dear deceased
And left her a remain.
Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss."
"The clay that rests beneath this stone
As Silas Wood was widely known.
Now, lying here, I ask what good
It was to let me be S. Wood.
O Man, let not ambition trouble you,
Is the advice of Silas W."
"Richard Haymon, of Heaven. Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807,
and had
the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874."
INSURANCE, n.
An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is
permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating
the man who keeps the table.
INSURRECTION, n.
An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to substitute
misrule for bad government.
INTENTION, n.
The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over
another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or
remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
INTERPRETER, n.
One who enables two persons of different languages to understand
each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the
interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
INTERREGNUM, n.
The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a
warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting
the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy
results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm
again.
INTIMACY, n.
A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their
mutual destruction.
INTRODUCTION, n.
A social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of
his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The introduction
attains its most malevolent development in this century, being,
indeed, closely related to our political system. Every American
being the equal of every other American, it follows that
everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the
right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration
of Independence should have read thus:
"We hold these truths to be self- evident: that all men
are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right
to
make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an
incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly
the
liberty to introduce persons to one another without first
ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies;
and
the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of
strangers."
INVENTOR, n.
A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers
and springs, and believes it civilization.
IRRELIGION, n.
The principal one of the great faiths of the world.