"A cat is a soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle."
"Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize."
"RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead."
"PRECIPITATE, adj. Anteprandial. Precipitate in all, this sinner Took action first, and then his dinner. --Judibras."
"PRECEDENT, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament."
"PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily conceived. Melsius believed them to have inhabited "the Void" and to have been something intermediate between fishes and birds. Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy."
"POTABLE, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable; indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as thirst, for which it is a medicine. Upon nothing has so great and diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of substitutes for water. To hold that this general aversion to that liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be unscientific --and without science we are as the snakes and toads."
"POSITIVISM, n. A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer."
"PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic."
"PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood. He lived in a period prehistoric, When all was absurd and phantasmagoric. Born later, when Clio, celestial recorded, Set down great events in succession and order, He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous In anything here but the lies that she threw at us. --Orpheus Bowen."