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<title>The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary: D</title>
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<h1>G</h1>


<p class="entry"><span class="def">gallows</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is
translated to heaven. In this country the gallows is chiefly remarkable for the
number of persons who escape it.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Whether on the gallows high</p>
<p class="poetry">Or where blood flows the reddest, The noblest place for man to die—</p>
<p class="poetry">Is where he died the deadest.</p>
<p class="citeauth">(Old play)</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">gargoyle</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A rain-pout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval buildings, commonly fashioned
into a grotesque caricature of some personal enemy of the architect or owner of
the building. This was especially the case in churches and ecclesiastical
structures generally, in which the gargoyles presented a perfect rogues’
gallery of local heretics and controversialists. Sometimes when a new dean and
chapter were installed the old gargoyles were removed and others substituted
having a closer relation to the private animosities of the new incumbents.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">garther</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and
desolating the country.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">generous</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of
persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">genealogy</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">genteel</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Refined, after the fashion of a gent.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:</p>
<p class="poetry">A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.</p>
<p class="poetry">Heed not the definitions your “Unabridged” presents,</p>
<p class="poetry">For dictionary makers are generally gents.</p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">geographer</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Habeam, geographer of wide reknown,</p>
<p class="poetry">Native of Abu-Keber’s ancient town,</p>
<p class="poetry">In passing thence along the river Zam</p>
<p class="poetry">To the adjacent village of Xelam,</p>
<p class="poetry">Bewildered by the multitude of roads,</p>
<p class="poetry">Got lost, lived long on migratory toads,</p>
<p class="poetry">Then from exposure miserably died,</p>
<p class="poetry">And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Henry Haukhorn</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">geology</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The science of the earth’s crust—to which, doubtless, will be added that of its
interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological
formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or
lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners’ tools,
antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary
is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway
tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato
cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">ghost</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">He saw a ghost.</p>
<p class="poetry">It occupied—that dismal thing!&#8212;</p>
<p class="poetry">The path that he was following.</p>
<p class="poetry">Before he’d time to stop and fly,</p>
<p class="poetry">An earthquake trifled with the eye</p>
<p class="poetry">That saw a ghost.</p>
<p class="poetry">He fell as fall the early good;</p>
<p class="poetry">Unmoved that awful vision stood.</p>
<p class="poetry">The stars that danced before his ken</p>
<p class="poetry">He wildly brushed away, and then</p>
<p class="poetry">He saw a post.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Jared Macphester</p>
</div>

<p class="indentpara">Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions somebody’s ingenious theory to the
effect that they are as much afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may
judge from such tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from
memories of my own experience.</p>

<p class="indentpara">There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes naked: he
appears either in a winding-sheet or “in his habit as he lived.” To believe in
him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make
themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power
inheres in textile fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this
ability, what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the
apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost in it? These
be riddles of significance. They reach away down and get a convulsive grip on
the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">ghoul</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring the dead. The existence of
ghouls has been disputed by that class of controversialists who are more
concerned to deprive the world of comforting beliefs than to give it anything
good in their place. In 1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence
and frightened it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted
with many heads an an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more than
one place at a time. The good man was coming away from dinner at the time and
explains that if he had not been “heavy with eating” he would have seized the
demon at all hazards. Atholston relates that a ghoul was caught by some sturdy
peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to
think that so distinguished a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of
rosewater.) The water turned at once to blood “and so contynues unto ys daye.” The
pond has since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the
fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral at Amiens
and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed men with a priest
at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and captured the ghoul, which,
thinking to escape by the stratagem, had transformed itself to the semblance of
a well known citizen, but was nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the
midst of hideous popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed
was so affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself
in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">glutton</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">gnome</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the interior parts of the
earth and having special custody of mineral treasures. Bjorsen, who died in
1765, says gnomes were common enough in the southern parts of Sweden in his
boyhood, and he frequently saw them scampering on the hills in the evening
twilight. Ludwig Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest,
and Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a Silesian
mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these statements, we find
that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as 1764.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">gnostics</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early
Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the
combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">gnu</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo
and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an
earthquake and a cyclone.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">A hunter from Kew caught a distant view</p>
<p class="poetry">Of a peacefully meditative gnu,</p>
<p class="poetry">And he said: “I’ll pursue, and my hands imbrue</p>
<p class="poetry">In its blood at a closer interview.”</p>
<p class="poetry">But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw</p>
<p class="poetry">O’er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;</p>
<p class="poetry">And he said as he flew: “It is well I withdrew</p>
<p class="poetry">Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew That really meritorious gnu.”</p>
<p class="citeauth">Jarn Leffer</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">good</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Sensible, madam,
to the worth of this present writer.</p>

<p>Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">goose</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are
penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird’s intellectual
energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically
across paper by a person called an “author,” there results a very fair and
accurate transcript of the fowl’s thought and feeling. The difference in geese,
as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have
only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese
indeed.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">gorgon</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span></p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">The Gorgon was a maiden bold</p>
<p class="poetry">Who turned to stone the Greeks of old</p>
<p class="poetry">That looked upon her awful brow.</p>
<p class="poetry">We dig them out of ruins now,</p>
<p class="poetry">And swear that workmanship so bad</p>
<p class="poetry">Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.</p>
</div>
<p class="entry"><span class="def">gout</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">graces</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus,
serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for
they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing
whatever breeze happened to be blowing.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">grammar</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man,
along the path by which he advances to distinction.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">grape</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span></p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Hail noble fruit!&#8212;by Homer sung,</p>
<p class="poetry">Anacreon and Khayyam;</p>
<p class="poetry">Thy praise is ever on the tongue</p>
<p class="poetry">Of better men than I am.</p>
<p class="poetry">The lyre in my hand has never swept,</p>
<p class="poetry">The song I cannot offer:</p>
<p class="poetry">My humbler service pray accept—</p>
<p class="poetry">I’ll help to kill the scoffer.</p>
<p class="poetry">The water-drinkers and the cranks</p>
<p class="poetry">Who load their skins with liquor—</p>
<p class="poetry">I’ll gladly bear their belly-tanks</p>
<p class="poetry">And tap them with my sticker.</p>
<p class="poetry">Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools</p>
<p class="poetry">When e’er we let the wine rest.</p>
<p class="poetry">Here’s death to Prohibition’s fools,</p>
<p class="poetry">And every kind of vine-pest!</p>
<p class="citeauth">Jamrach Holobom</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">grapeshot</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">grave</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Beside a lonely grave I stood—</p>
<p class="poetry">With brambles ‘twas encumbered;</p>
<p class="poetry">The winds were moaning in the wood,</p>
<p class="poetry">Unheard by him who slumbered,</p>
<p class="poetry">A rustic standing near, I said:</p>
<p class="poetry">“He cannot hear it blowing!”</p>
<p class="poetry">“’Course not,” said he: “the feller’s dead—</p>
<p class="poetry">He can’t hear nowt [sic] that’s going.”</p>
<p class="poetry">“Too true,” I said; “alas, too true—</p>
<p class="poetry">No sound his sense can quicken!”</p>
<p class="poetry">“Well, mister, wot is that to you?&#8212;</p>
<p class="poetry">The deadster ain’t a-kickin’.”</p>
<p class="poetry">I knelt and prayed: “O Father, smile</p>
<p class="poetry">On him, and mercy show him!”</p>
<p class="poetry">That countryman looked on the while,</p>
<p class="poetry">And said: “Ye didn’t know him.”</p>
<p class="citeauth">Pobeter Dunko</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">gravitation</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportion to
the quantity of matter they contain—the quantity of matter they contain being
ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is
a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of
B, makes B the proof of A.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">great</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span></p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">“I’m great,” the Lion said—“I reign</p>
<p class="poetry">The monarch of the wood and plain!”</p>
<p class="poetry">The Elephant replied: “I’m great—</p>
<p class="poetry">No quadruped can match my weight!”</p>
<p class="poetry">“I’m great—no animal has half</p>
<p class="poetry">So long a neck!” said the Giraffe.</p>
<p class="poetry">“I’m great,” the Kangaroo said—“see</p>
<p class="poetry">My femoral muscularity!”</p>
<p class="poetry">The ‘Possum said: “I’m great—behold,</p>
<p class="poetry">My tail is lithe and bald and cold!”</p>
<p class="poetry">An Oyster fried was understood</p>
<p class="poetry">To say: “I’m great because I’m good!”</p>
<p class="poetry">Each reckons greatness to consist</p>
<p class="poetry">In that in which he heads the list,</p>
<p class="poetry">And Vierick thinks he tops his class</p>
<p class="poetry">Because he is the greatest ass.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Arion Spurl Doke</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">guillotine</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.</p>

<p>In his great work on <i>Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution</i>,
the learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture&#8212;
the shrug—among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles and it is
simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head inside the shell. It is
with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an authority, but in my judgment
(as more elaborately set forth and enforced in my work entitled <i>Hereditary Emotions</i>&#8212;lib. II, c. XI) the
shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a theory, for
previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I have not a doubt that
it is directly referable to the terror inspired by the guillotine during the
period of that instrument’s activity.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">gunpowder</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might
become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of
gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton
says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems
to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover, it has the hearty
concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture.</p>

<p>Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event that occurred on the Government
experimental farm in the District of Columbia. One day, several years ago, a
rogue imperfectly reverent of the Secretary’s profound attainments and personal
character presented him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the sed of
the <i>Flashawful flabbergastor</i>, a
Patagonian cereal of great commercial value, admirably adapted to this climate.
The good Secretary was instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward
inhume it with soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous
line of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a lighted
match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the earth had
somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary saw himself pursued
by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and fierce evolution. He stood for a
moment paralyzed and speechless, then he recollected an engagement and,
dropping all, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to the
eyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages, and
audibly refusing to be comforted. “Great Scott! what is that?” cried a
surveyor’s chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading line of
agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. “That,” said the surveyor,
carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again centering his attention upon
his instrument, “is the Meridian of Washington.”</p>


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