Source: http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/p.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 06:20:22+00:00

Document:
PAGAN, n. A benighted person who prefers home-made deities and indigenous religious rites.
PALACE, n. A fine and costly residence, particularly that of a great official. The residence of a high dignitary of the Christian Church is called a palace; that of the Founder of his religion was known as a field, or wayside. There is progress.
PALM, n. A species of tree having several varieties, of which the familiar "itching palm" (Palma hominis) is most widely distributed and sedulously cultivated. This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver. The metal will adhere with remarkable tenacity. The fruit of the itching palm is so bitter and unsatisfying that a considerable percentage of it is sometimes given away in what are known as "benefactions."
PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's classification) of obtaining money by false pretences. It consists in "reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe." The imposture consists in not reading it aloud.
PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer. When disturbed by his voice the ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his pride of distinction.
PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called "trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to a life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
PARRICIDE, n. A filial coup de grâce whereby one is released from the lingering torments of paternity.
PARTISAN, n. An adherent without sense.
PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one — the knowledge and the dream.
PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
PEDESTRIAN, n. The variable (and audible) part of the roadway for an automobile.
PERDITION, n. The loss of one's soul; also the place in which it can be found.
PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state or quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.
The editor of an English magazine having received a letter pointing out the erroneous nature of his views and style, and signed "Perfection," promptly wrote at the foot of the letter: "I don't agree with you," and mailed it to Matthew Arnold.
PERICARDIUM, n. A sack of membrane covering a multitude of sins.
PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupils' objections. A needless precaution — they knew no more of the matter than he.
The one at the goal while the other is — where?"
PERSUASION, n. A species of hypnotism in which the oral suggestion takes the hindering form of argument or appeal.
In the legislative body of the future, votes will be won, as now, by hypnotic suggestion, but there will be no darkening of counsel and impeding of the public business by debate; opposition will be stared into assent.
PETTIFOGGER, n. A competing or opposing lawyer.
PHŒNIX, n. The classical prototype of the modern "small hot bird."
PIANOFORTE, (abbreviated to Piano), n. An instrument thoughtfully provided by American husbands and fathers for their wives and daughters, in observance of Bulwer's dictum that "the best way to keep the dear creatures from playing the devil is to encourage them in playing the fool."
PICKABACK, adv. In the manner of a traveling railroad magnate.
PILLAGE, v. To carry on business candidly.
PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction — prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.
PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.
PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-morality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.
PLATTER, n. A senseless thing that holds food without eating it.
And this is the thought that it carried.
"I fear that your love is decreasing.
How is it, dear, now that we're married?"
He doesn't make love to the platter"
PLAUDITS, n. Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and devour it.
PLEASURE, n. [1.] The least hateful form of dejection. [2.] An emotion engendered by something advantageous to one's self or disastrous to others. In the plural this word signifies those mostly artificial aids to melancholy that deepen the general gloom of existence with a particular dejection.
PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.
PLOW, n. An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the pen.
PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanished opportunity.
PLUTARCHY, n. Government by those who are wise in personal property and good in real estate.
PLUTOCRACY, n. A republican form of government deriving its powers from the conceit of the governed — in thinking they govern.
POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.
POLECAT, n. A small European animal that is kind enough to lend its name to the American tongue as a euphemism for that of the native skunk, than which it is esteemed more genteel. Like the skunk, however, it makes music for the deaf when kicked.
POLITE, adj. Skilled in the art and practice of dissimulation.
POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he possessed it he would have gone elsewhere. In the picturesque speech of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was known as "The Matter with Kansas."
PORT, n. A place where ships taking shelter from storms are shattered by customs officers.
PORTABLE, adj. Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of possession.
Is portable improperty, I take it.
PORTION, n. A part — in the loose locution of the letterless unworthy. "Part" means a fraction or piece of the whole, but "portion" means a share and implies an allotment. By reverent observance of this distinction great public disaster may be averted.
PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.
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.
POSSESSION, n. An advantage that accrues to A by denial of the right of B to take the property of C.
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.
PRACTICALLY, adv. The literary sloven's word for "virtually."
PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race that 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 is known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.
PREDICT, v. To relate an event that has not occurred, is not occurring and will.
An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die. "Because," he replied, "death is no better than life." It is longer.
PRESBYTERIAN, n. One who holds the conviction that the governing authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.
PRESENT, n. [1.] That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope. [2.] Something given in expectation of something better. To-day's payment for to-morrow's service.
PRESENTIMENT, n. Consciousness of a brief immunity from something disagreeable.
Stunning events cast their shadows before.
PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom — and of whom only — it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
PRETTY, adj. Vain, conceited, as "a pretty girl." Tiresome, as "a pretty picture."
PREVARICATOR, n. A liar in the caterpillar state.
PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply — the sword, the spear and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of propulsion.
PROMISE, n. A form of incantation to conjure up a hope that is to be exorcised later by inattention.
PROMOTE, v. In financial affairs, to contribute to the development of a transfer company — one that transfers money from the pocket of the investor to that of the promoter.
PUBLIC, n. The negligible factor in problems of legislation.

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