(I hope your memory’s strong,)
That first ecstatic, rapturous kiss
You waited for, so long!_
=Jul´lix=, _n._ 1. A mental affinity, with a similar taste and
inclination. 2. One who knew you when you were a child.
“He speaks my own language!” Smile if you will, and call it
sentimentality, but some there are, your jullixes, who laugh at the same
jokes as you and weep at the same sights. Out of the ruck of social
five-o’clocks you pick them, like single pearls out of dead oysters, and
they shine in your memory forever. Three words spoken, and you know them
as you know yourself; and you have floated lightly from ports of
conventionality, never to return. (See _Frime_.)
Such is your jullix. It is not only that he loves your authors and your
songs; not that he has been to the same queer foreign little towns that
you have “discovered”--or even that she has had the same operation. Of
your jullix you know far more than that--you know his soul.
When you are rich, sedate and prominent, comes one with whiskers and
calls you, “Bill!” He knew you when you wore short trousers; and he,
too, knows your language--that all but forgotten speech of your youth.
(See _Thusk_.)
Is she a jullix who was once engaged to the man whom you have married? A
jullix? Yes, but alas, she knows too much for friendship!
A woman’s jullix is one who knows her real age.
_How Elsie stared! Did Elsie guess
What bond united her
To that girl opposite her? Yes!
It was her jullix, sure._
_Oh, not from souls akin, and less
From friendship did she know her;
But both had bought the self-same dress
In the same department store!_
=Jurp=, _n._ 1. A haughty inferior; a saucy underling. 2. An impudent
servant or clerk.
=Jur´pid=, _a._ Insubordinate or impertinent.
Cooks, brakemen, shop girls are often jurpid. The whistling, gum-chewing
office boy, who won’t take in your card and says, “The manager’s out,”
is jurpid.
The officious policeman, the barber who talks, the headwaiter, who
always gives you the table you don’t want, is jurpid when you object.
(See _Moosoo_.)
What good does it do to report the jurp? You’ll only have on your
conscience the fact that a man with a big family has lost his job. And
so, you swallow his jurpid jibes.
“Well,” says the jurpid milliner, “you _said_ you wanted a red hat, and
this hat’s red. We ain’t got anything _redder_. If I’d a-known you
wanted _blue_, why didn’t you say so, and I’d a-shown you some purple
ones! You can see for yourself green’s more becoming, though.”
Colored maids, messenger boys and janitors cannot help being jurps--they
were born that way. (See _Splooch_.)
_It was a jurp who answered back,
Impertinent and pert;
A filthy beast, who drove a hack--
You should have seen his shirt!_
_And I a gentleman! Whee-ew,
What jurpid things he said!
I’d given him a dollar, too!
But it was made of lead._
=Kid´loid=, _n._ 1. A precocious or self-assertive infant; an _enfant
terrible_. 2. A hotel or stage child. Any juvenile person who is
too ubiquitous.
=Kid´loid=, _a._ Impertinent or offensive, in a childish way.
In the hotel the kidloid is manufactured and developed from shy and
timid modesty to the final perfect stages of conspicuous vulgarity. He
is like an improbable old man, or a cynical hag but without the charm of
age.
The kidloid, in comic papers, hides under the couch when his sister’s
beau is calling, and is subsequently bribed to silence. In actual life,
however, he is much more offensive when you know he’s about. (See
_Vorge_.)
The kidloid is called upon to recite “pieces” before company, and
invariably makes a fool of his parents.
The kidloid makes conversation an agony, and has the apparent power of a
multiple personality. He seems like at least a dozen persons when he is
in the room.
Kidloids are created by fond and idolatrous parents by the simple
process of giving them their own way.
The stage kidloid is a cross between an intelligent ape and a mummy. The
hotel kidloid is an anthropoid dynamo. (See _Gollohix_.)
_The Kidloid at the Beach Hotel
We thought a model child,
For he behaved so very well--
He was so meek and mild._
_But every girl, for comfort’s sake,
Had paid him, every day
That she had company, to make
That kidloid stay away!_
[Illustration: KIPE]
=Kipe=, _v._ To inspect critically; to appraise pragmatically; to eye
with jealousy or envy.
=Kipe=, _n._ A woman’s glance at another woman.
Up and down, from hat to heel, women kipe each other insolently as they
pass. In subway or in street-car, every woman who enters is kiped by her
shrewd-eyed sisters. In that keen first glance, every article of the new
comer’s raiment is appraised. (See _Flooijab_.)
So, at the employment agency, the housewife kipes the cook, and cook
kipes housewife, each turning away with the thought, “She won’t do for
me.” (See _Snosh_.)
Employer kipes the applicant for position, accepts or rejects. The
poker-player, with his last blue chip in the pot, kipes his four-card
draw. The fastidious smoker kipes the gift cigar. The golfer kipes his
“lie.”
Says Aunt Samanthy Hanks to Mary Jane at the county fair, as she kipes
the patchwork bedquilts in the gallery, “Mine’s better’n her’n.” Says
the mother of the bride, as she kipes the wedding presents spread out on
the table, “H’m! his folks must be close-fisted.” (See _Gefoojet_.)
As you whiz, motoring through the park, a car flashes by--but not too
fast for your automobile host to kipe it: “1913 36-6 ‘Strangler’-- No
good!”
So do the village girls kipe the strange young man in town.
_Carlotta kipes at Ermyntrude,
And Ermyntrude at Rose;
And every stitch that each has on
Each other lady knows._
_Each lady knows the other’s faults,
Her quality and size,
And just how old and good she is;
Would men were half as wise!_
=Krip´sle=, _n._ A worrying physical sensation, an invisible
annoyance absorbing one’s attention.
=Krip´sly=, _a._ Distracting, distrait, unmentionably provocative.
Walking on spilt sugar is kripsly.
That fugitive morsel of walnut-meat in the cavity of your bi-cuspid,
which your tongue chases so thoughtfully, but in vain--a fascinating
kripsle, as kripsly as a loose tooth! (See _Vorge_.)
Has a hairpin fallen down your back? Smile, and don’t be kripsly; beware
that faraway look that tells the story! And when through that hole in
your stocking your big toe sticks out, don’t be kripsled!
The ancient Stoics, like the modern Christian Scientists, declared that
all kripsles were Error. But Mortal Mind knows full well that when you
have both hands and arms full of bundles, the drop that hangs, pulling
at the end of your nose, is a kripsle hard to bear--it cannot be snuffed
in or shaken off.
The philosopher may be calm, even while his foot is awakening from a
sound sleep; the poet may not lose his inspiration even with a hair in
his mouth; but to plain John W. Smith, of 101 Eighth Avenue, a kripsle
is as disturbing as a broken elbow, or a bleeding poached egg in its
death agony. (See _Slub_.)
_Perhaps you think that smile you caught,
Her introspective air,
Her pensive mien--is caused by thought
Too shy for you to share._
_Ah, so it is! With all your tact
You fail. It is no use!
For she is kripsled by the fact
That her left garter’s loose._
=Lal´li-fac-tion=, _n._ A verbose story, a joke repeated.
=Lal´li-fy=, _v._ 1. To act too slowly; to delay. 2. To give an
over-painstaking or super-elaborate performance.
Did you ever hear an Englishman lallify his conversation with, “What I
mean to say is this,” and “if you know what I mean” and “do you see”? So
the shop girl lallifies her talk with “Listen here!” or “Say, listen!”
while she gropes for an idea. The preacher, barren of fresh thoughts,
lallifies his meager sermon. “Fourthly, beloved brethren--” (See
_Drillig_.)
A “talky” play is lallified till the house walks out. Like a song sung
too slowly, so is the lallified talk of the young man who doesn’t want
to escort that particular girl home. (See _Vorge_ and _Xenogore_.)
The lallified book: Wide, wide margins and thick, thick paper--or, maybe
it is lallified only with adjectives or adverbs.
Have you ever heard that man Gerrish tell his favorite story, lallifying
it with dialect-dialogue till you yawned? Then, after you have forced a
laugh, he lallifies the point with reminiscent unction, repeating it
reflectively, itching for more applause.
The consummate lallification is two women saying good-bye to each other.
(See _Wumgush_.)
_For months and months the Hemmingways
Have lallified of Baby,
How Baby walks and talks and plays--
And have I listened? Maybe._
_But now the time has come, today,
To lallify that pair;
For I am working on a play,
And talk about it there!_
=Le´o-lump=, _n._ 1. An interrupter of conversations; one who always
brings the talk back to himself. 2. An egoist; one who thinks you
are necessarily interested in what interests him.
“When I was in Italy,” I began, carelessly--
“Oh, dear, I’ve never been out of New York!” she whined. “I do wish I
could go to Italy sometime!”
She was a leolump. I could not mention anything without her applying it
to herself. The word “objective” was not in her dictionary.
The leolump always caps your story with one stranger and bigger than
yours. He has acquired the art of the superlative. (See _Persotude_.)
Talk to a leolump actor of logarithms, and in an instant he will prove
relationship; he can show himself to be first cousin to the
carbo-hydrates in a congress of foreign chemists.
Conversation? Impossible when a leolump is present. Even if he has the
civility not to interrupt, which he hasn’t, the minute you stop speaking
he is astride his hobby and riding himself to social suicide. (See
_Blurb_.)
He has a million subjects ready in the pigeon-hole marked “I.”
Women are seldom leolumps, for they never allow the conversation to
depart from the subject of themselves. And so they never have to
interrupt, or bring the topic back.
_He breaks into your talk, and cries,
“Oh, that reminds me,”--then
Oh, how his tale your patience tries!
But you begin again._
_A leolump you cannot shame;
His head is like a fly’s;
His brain is small, but all the same,
He has a thousand “I’s.”_
=Loob´lum=, _n._ 1. A pleasant thing that is bad for one; rich, but
dangerous food. 2. A flatterer; flattery.
=Loob´loid=, _a._ 1. Sweet, but indigestible.
Loobloid is the broiled live lobster and the hot mince pie. Loobloid,
ice water when you are warm and whiskey when you are cold.
But human nature still woos the looblum. For youthful
inexperience, green apples and the first cigar; for age, ennui and
discouragement,--opium, morphine and cocaine.
Yes, all those things of which the bromide says, “I like them, but they
don’t like me,” are loobloid. Black coffee at night and a cocktail in
the morning--both are looblums.
And yet, the mental looblums are worse; corroding the character with
sweetest poisons. How rapturously we gulp them down! You ask criticism
on what you know is bad, and enjoy the loobloid praise. On his opening
night, the ambitious playwright makes his speech in answer to the
looblums of applause. (See _Wumgush_.)
On the morning after her wedding-day, the blue-nosed bride reads
loobloid descriptions of her beauty at the ceremony.
Most loobloid, but most sweet! The flattery of the fond and doting
parent. (See _Culp_.)
_My after-dinner speech was lame,
No gift of gab is mine;
The chairman praised me, all the same,
He said my talk was fine._
_I had been terrified, and I
Made blunders that were frightful;
The chairman lied--but what’s a lie?
His looblum was delightful!_
=Ma-chiz´zlum=, _n._ 1. A thinly disguised boredom. 2. A
disappointing spectacle. 3. The apotheosis of the obvious.
=Ma-chiz´zle=, _v._ 1. To attempt unsuccessfully to please. 2. To try
too hard to like something.
Pageants, processions and picnics are all machizzlums; for well you know
before they start, that boredom shall be yours. Why does one stand
jammed, crowded, uncomfortable, peering over bobbing heads at men in
curious costumes marching by? Why endure the long waits of the
machizzlum? After it is over, one wonders why he has just consented to
be machizzled.
Almost every motion picture show is a machizzlum to sane-brained folk.
So is watching the election returns, or an automobile race where there
are no accidents, or a partial eclipse of the moon.
Do you call upon a belle? Do you try to converse with the “popular” man?
Surely you will be machizzled. Don’t try to read the book that has been
too widely praised; what everyone likes, is sure to be a machizzlum.
(See _Ovotch_.)
The easiest way to be machizzled, is to fall in love with an actress.
The young, young girl smirks and smiles and blushing, says: “O Mr. Poet,
tell me, when did you first find you had this power?” But to the less
sentimental herd, the great machizzlum is to be introduced to a
celebrity. (See _Yowf_.)
_It costs you ten to see the sight,
The weather always lowers;
Your seat is narrow, hard and tight,
You wait for hours and hours;_
_And when at last the thing is o’er,
And the last red light has fizzled
You know the thing has been a bore;
Once more you’ve been machizzled!_
=Meem=, _n._ An artificial half light that women love; a charitable
obscurity; a becoming gloom.
=Meem´y=, _a._ Obscure, dim, uncertain.
From a brilliantly lighted hall outside, you plunge into the meemy
parlors wherein shadows flit, vague, uncertain. You stumble over a rug.
A silhouette rises and comes forth to meet you. How many are there
there? Who are they? Mysterious is the meem!
Meemy is that uneasy, tantalizing obscurity, that depressed
semi-darkness that women who-would-be-artistic find so necessary for the
preservation of their charms. To a man the meem is maddening and
meaningless; if there are pretty women present, he wishes to see them.
(See _Kipe_.)
There’s a dim, religious meem, the shadowy penumbra of great
cathedrals--the sentimental meem, the sad gloom of the funeral--the
amorous meem, the starlit darkness, wherein lovers linger.
The meemy woman always sits with her back to the light, to watch you
from an ambush. (See _Squinch_.)
Candles are meemy, especially red ones--except when used properly, in
clusters.
Still, a meem does keep out the flies.
_All meemy was the studio,
And meemy maidens--wait!
Say, were they maidens? Heavens, no!
Are maidens thirty-eight?_
_Well, anyway, they passed for such,
For candles make a meem
That women think disguises much.
Things are not what they seem._
=Moo´ble=, _n._ 1. A mildly amusing affair; a moderate success. 2. A
person or thing over whom it is difficult to be enthusiastic.
=Moo´bly=, _adj._, _adv._ Innocuous, feebly, without unction.
The Samoans have a word which means,
“A-party-is-approaching-which-contains-neither
-a-clever-man-nor-a-pretty-woman.”
It’s a mooble. Dancing with your own wife is a mooble--a fairly good
play, a dinner-party where the _ménu_ makes up for the _dramatis
personæ_--moobles!
Mooble is the word that “Damns with faint praise”--an “awfully nice
girl”--why not say it point blank: “She’s a mooble.” (See _Cowcat_.)
Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant--a mooble.
A tame young man--a mooble. (See _Snosh_.)
You may be a wonder with women,--leaving a trail of fire behind you as
you go--but you’re a mooble at tennis. You’re a mooble at pool, too,
although you “used to play a very good game.”
Moobly novels are written by--well, of course you know already. Moobly
foods: cornstarch custard, warm iced tea, vanilla ice cream. The
W.C.T.U. is a mooble. So is a commencement essay, and most tall, blonde
women.
But the perfect mooble is the man you used to be engaged to. (See
_Thusk_.)
_At first I thought her a genius bright,
Almost an angel--out of sight!
But the second time that I went to call
I found her a mooble, after all._
_Only a mooble, and then she wrote,
Oh, what a moobly, moobly note!
And how can you wonder my love should end?
She began her letter to me, “Dear Friend”!_
=Moo´soo=, _a._ 1. Sulky, out of sorts, blue, taciturn, discontented.
2. Unsuccessful; getting out of order; going wrong, delayed.
Moosoo is a mild form of “the dumps.” You are moosoo while waiting for
someone who is late, especially late for dinner; when your dress doesn’t
quite fit, or isn’t quite becoming.
Moosoo is the secondary stage of getting over acute ill humor. It is the
mood of the wife in her second year of marriage.
Moosoo is the clerk who is discontented with his position. Moosoo is the
salesman, when you return goods or exchange them. (See _Jurp_.)
Moosoo is the brakeman, when the train is delayed.
The wall-flower at the dance is moosoo, though her smiles are pungent.
Moosoo is the maiden when the young man fails to propose, although she
shows it not.
Moosoo is the interested escort, when the restaurant music is too loud
at dinner. (See _Huzzlecoo_.)
Children are moosoo, when they can’t go to the circus; the traveling
salesman, when his cigar leaks; and even the polite husband, when the
burned chops are set before him.
The weather, itself, can be moosoo, with clouds and dullness for weeks
at a time.
_The day was moosoo; Mary Ann
Was moosoo, so was I;
And moosoo were the girl and man
Whom we’d invited--why?_
_Why did we sulk, disgusted, far
From home, discouraged, blue?
Because my brand new motor-car
Alas, was moosoo, too!_
=Nink=, _n._ 1. A useless “antique” object, preserved in worship of
the picturesque. 2. An imitation of a by-gone style.
=Nink´ty=, _a._ Architecturally dishonest.
You buy your ninks at “Ye Olde Shoppe” and by that “Ye”--you shall know
the ninkty. For a nink is a brass candlestick with no candle in it; the
pewter mugs and platters, unpolished, on the sideboard; the old china,
dusty and unused upon the wall; old tiles and brass knockers.
The old flax-wheel in the corner is a nink; the framed old sporting
prints of horse races and stagecoaches; the framed theatre bills.
Pompeian bronze tripods, never lighted, in hotel corridors. (See
_Gorgule_.)
A beefsteak party is a nink, and May-day dances and pageants; anything
revived, revamped for modern use. Doors, covered with nails and
decorative hinges bolted on; things sewed with thongs; imitation
parchment scrolls. Whale-oil lamps, ships’ lanterns; almost any object
of leather, copper, or brass. (See _Gefoojet_.)
Architectural ninks are imitation beams in the ceiling; hollow columns;
furniture, with imitation mortises and pegs.
The ninkiest nink of all is the framed motto on the wall, or a legend
painted over the fireplace.
_The ninks that Mr. Parvenu
Has bought, because “artistic,”
Are “genuine antiques,” though you
Call them anachronistic._
_But still, one nink is not disgraced--
That sun dial he got
Is now appropriately placed;
He put it on his yacht!_
=Nodge=, _n._ 1. The only one of its kind or set. 2. A person who
doesn’t “fit in;” a Martian.
=Nod´gy=, _a._ 1. Impertinent, inconsistent, inapplicable; having no
mate.
Wife or housewife--all women know the nodge. It’s the odd tumbler, or
odd plate,--the one button whose mates have disappeared; the one glove
that persistently turns up; the single shoe or stocking; those three
trading-stamps she doesn’t throw away.
Nodgy is that extra envelope--too small for the paper; the one chair
that doesn’t match the furniture; the lone coat, whose skirt has long
since worn out; the hat that goes with no possible gown.
Nodgy is the Methodist minister at a poker party; nodgy the cut-up at
prayer meeting, or the ugly damsel at the ball.
The modest country girl is nodgy with women who smoke cigarettes. (See
_Ovotch_.)
How long have you saved that old lace yoke--waiting for something to put
it on. Throw it away! It’s a nodge. (See _Gefoojet_.)
_I took my aunt to see the town,
A task I couldn’t dodge;
At every cabaret she’d frown,
She was a perfect nodge._
_But when, to visit her, I went
To Pudding Centre, Mass.,
She took me to a gospel tent,
I was a nodge, alas!_
=Nul´kin=, _n._ 1. The core or inside history of any occurrence. A
true, but secret explanation. 2. Facts known, but not told.
The “nigger-in-the-woodpile” was named Mr. Nulkin.
The object of a trial by jury is to find the nulkin of the crime.
Why were they divorced? What does she see in him? Nobody knows the
nulkin. It is the skeleton in the closet.
The nulkin is the true motive. _Cherchez la nulkin._
The diplomatic service is full of nulkins.
Why didn’t we go to war with Mexico? Did we fear Japan? What is the
nulkin?
Why did she get the part of leading lady? This is the theatrical nulkin.
Why is a book popular? Publishers strive in vain to discover the
literary nulkin. (See _Edicle_.)
Why do imitators fail? Because they copy outside traits, and not the
inmost nulkin. (See _Bripkin_.)
A nulkin is the secret thought you never tell,--the real reason why your
wife doesn’t like Sarah.
_“What does he see in her?” we ask;
“What does she see in him?”
Ah, matrimonial nulkins task
The brains of seraphim!_
_The nulkin is what you have tried,
And I have tried to know;
Instead, we judge from what’s outside--
Perhaps ’tis better so._
=Oo´fle=, _n._ 1. A person whose name you cannot remember. 2. A state
of forgetfulness regarding a friend or thing.
=Oo´fle=, _v._ 1. To try to find out a person’s name without asking.
2. To talk to an unknown person without introducing him to a nearby
friend.
=Oofled=, _p.p._ Mortified needlessly.
“How do you do, Mr. Goheevus; you don’t remember me, do you?” Are you
oofled? If you are not, you will say, “No, why should I?” But alas, one
usually _is_ oofled, and struggles desperately to conceal the fact,
groping wildly in the well of one’s memory for the lost name, while
one’s friends stand about reproachfully, waiting to be introduced.
Any person whose name is Baker is an oofle,--or Brown, or Davis. The
other most celebrated oofles are Harris, Johnson, Miller, Palmer, Pratt,
Porter, Stevens, Simpson, Richards, Roberts, Taylor, Wheeler and Wilson.
Can you ever tell one from another? No, not even if the pistol is held
to your head! (See _Iobink_.)
Of course what’s an oofle to you may not be oofly to me, especially if
my name is Goheevus. (See _Mooble_.) But everyone is oofled by a hostess
who mumbles her introductions. (See _Cowcat_.)
_No wonder I was oofled, for,
Although I knew his face,
In some way, for the life of me,
His name I couldn’t place;_
_Now, was it Harris, Johnson, Brown,
Or Palmer, Jones or Platt?
He was an Oofle, anyway--
There was no doubt of that!_
=O-ro-bal´di-ty=, _n._ 1. Modern witchcraft; Orientalism adapted to
Occidental intellects; Emerson-and-milk. 2. An alleged process of
getting wise quickly; a short cut to success.
Orobaldity in its most acute form, _i. e._, Vedantic philosophy with the
asceticism left out, is particularly affected by females who are not
willing to gain success or happiness through mere effort. It consists of
gambling with the intellect, in order to gain a dishonest percentage of
mental profit.
Orobaldity is, in the main, a modern magic supposed to be controlled by
cryptic phrases and abracadabra such as “into the silence” and “holding
the thought.” It is not necessary to know the esoteric meaning of such
charms, or to exert any actual energy in obtaining one’s desires. (See
_Gubble_.)
Orobaldity is a thing of “vibrations” and “thought currents” and is
founded mainly upon analogies with wireless telegraphy and other modern
scientific discoveries. It finds occult meanings in colors and numbers.
Orobaldity is medieval mysticism, mainly practised by women who have
nothing else to do. (See _Mooble_.)
Actresses out of work find in orobaldity a good substitute for trying to
get an engagement. Neurotic and erotic temperaments find it an admirable
stimulant to egoism.
_First she was a Christian Scientist,
And then a New Thought daughter;
Next she became a Theosophist,
Then Bahaiism caught her._
_But now her Occultism wanes,
Astrology dispelling;
Her Orobaldity remains
As just plain Fortune-Telling._
=O´votch=, _n._ 1. One who does things merely because others do. One
swayed by popular crazes, the victim of custom. 2. A currently
popular fad or form of amusement.