And there my wife’s old brooch
That she had lost a year or two
Was hidden in the splooch!_
[Illustration: SPLOOCH]
=Spuzz=, _n._ 1. Mental energy, an aggressive intellect. 2. Stamina,
force, spice.
=Spuz´zard=, _n._ 1. An active, forceful thinker. 2. A cocktail with
a “kick” in it.
=Spuz´zy=, _a._ 1. Highly seasoned. Charged with brain-electricity.
Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm have spuzz. Demiourgos, maker of
men, gave them an extra dash of the tabasco. (See _Persotude_.)
Spuzz in acting, in writing, or in business is what brings in the money.
Spuzz welcomes competition; it is always ready for the fray.
You can’t down the spuzzard; he is elastic, and bounces up after every
failure.
The spuzzard is the girl who could “just die dancing.” She answers her
letters the day they are received.
The farmer with no spuzz to him can never lift the mortgage; but the
spuzzy intensive Italian down the road is educating his sons to be
doctors and lawyers.
Spuzz is that getaheadative zip, tang, and racehorse enthusiasm that has
for its motto, “Do it now.”
A good Welch rarebit has spuzz; so has a dry Martini--but it’s the wrong
kind. (See _Looblum_.)
_How I admire a Suffragette!
No matter what she does,
She has red corpuscles, you bet!
She has a lot of spuzz!_
_And yet--I would not marry her;
But some shy, timid elf,
Some clinging flower shall be my bride;
I’ll find the spuzz, myself!_
=Squinch=, _n._ A nervous, anxious state of mind; a palpitating
desire to succeed beyond one’s deserts.
=Squinch=, _v._ To watch and wait, hoping things will turn one’s own
way; to anticipate.
No squinch like the sailor’s, sniffing the weather from the catheads, or
wherever he sniffs it from--unless it is the farmer, squinching for sun
or rain that will bring a harvest of crops enough to pay the interest on
the mortgage.
You squinch the stock market for a rise or fall; but no matter how you
squinch U. S. Steel Common, there’s always someone squinching it the
other way.
Then there’s the lottery squinch--or there used to be, wondering if the
winning number will end in 6.
The candidate is on the squinch before election with his ear to the
ground. President Wilson squinches Mexico as anxiously as a village girl
squinches her beau for a proposal. (See _Quink_.)
See the House Manager of a theatre in the box office squinching the
crowd coming in for the evening performance! So I squinch this word,
hoping that it will become popular.
Behind his geography, little Willie squinches his teacher, as he reads,
“The White Slaver’s Revenge,” or, “Saved by Eugenics.” (See _Kipe_.)
_I knew that I was squinched, because
When e’er I spoke of rings,
Or wedding bells, or marriage laws,
She looked unuttered things._
_But still I flirted, standing pat,
And did not yield an inch;
I told her I was married--that
Was how I fooled her squinch!_
[Illustration: TASHIVATE]
=Tash-i-va´tion=, _n._ The art of replying by means of reciprocal
tones.
=Tash´i-vate=, _v._ To reply without attention; to speak aimlessly,
or without interest, as to a child.
=Tash´i-vat-ed=, _p.p._ Absorbed in more interesting things;
inattentive; answered perfunctorily.
Have you acquired the art of tashivation? Can you read the newspaper
right along through your wife’s gossip, or your little daughter’s
prattle? This is the secret of true domesticity; it is the science of
being a husband.
The actress has an ear trained to distinguish emotions, and a tongue
trained to answer them without the conscious use of her brain. A friend
tells her a long, dull story, and her mind wanders through the Elysian
Fields of her own experiences, unheeding. Suddenly the tale ends--“And
there she was, right in the room with him!” What was it all about? Never
mind, the answer is easy: “Well, _what_ do you think of that?” (See
_Drillig_.)
Tashivation is answering without listening, as one speaks to a
beggar--as one talks at a crowded reception, as one answers the man who
asks for a loan.
When a man explains machinery to a woman, she tashivates, her mind on
pleasanter things; and so, when a woman explains fashions to a man. (See
_Varm_.)
_Why do I tashivate, and say
“Oh, yes,” and “Really?”--“Yes?”
Because although she talks, I try
To read my book, I guess._
_I nod and smile, and speak, sedate;
My wife keeps on her chatter.
So long as I can tashivate
Her questions do not matter._
=Thusk=, _n._ 1. Something that has quickly passed away. 2. A
precocious memory; an unnatural feeling of remoteness.
=Thusk´y=, _a._ So near, and yet so far.
Thusky are the sounds in the street, as you lie ill in bed in summer.
Thusky are your old love letters, tied in blue ribbons, the last one
postmarked fully a week ago. (See _Iobink_.)
Yesterday’s newspaper is thusky, and last year’s popular song. Thusky
are the novels that six months since were talked about and read. Thusky
are last winter’s styles. (See _Gowyop_.)
While you are abroad, the American newspapers are thusky; when you are
returning, all Europe is a thusk.
Thusky is the house you once lived in; your old sweetheart of college
days.
Which is the thuskiest,--a dead actor, an ex-president, or a popular
hero, now laid on the shelf?
_I met a thusk the other day;
Three times I had to look
Before I recognised him--say,
’Twas only Doctor Cook!_
_How thusky, now, his polar jest!
As thusky as the way
A joke would sound, if ’twere expressed
In slang of yesterday!_
=Tin´tid-dle=, _n._ 1. An imaginary conversation. 2. A witty retort,
thought of too late, a mental postscript.
=Tin-tid-di-la´tion=, _n._ Optimistic day-dreaming.
Oh, the bright reply you thought of, after you had gone--the crushing
answer that you _might_ have given! Who does not know the tardy
tintiddle? The questions you forgot to ask, the terms you forgot to
make, the repairs you did not ask. _Was_ there any closet in that corner
room? Now, _did_ that include water, or not? Tintiddling comes with
tantalizing thought. (See _Iobink_.)
When you rehearsed your speech the night before, the chorus of applause
came tintiddling to your ears. And when tintiddling you proposed to the
girl, she fell gratefully into your arms.
When in tintiddilation, you applied for that position, how noble was
your pose--how convincing were your words! But they were only
tintiddles, and tintiddles never come out as you expect. (See _Bimp_.)
Chastely tintiddling are the wedding anticipations of the bride! (See
_Jujasm_.)
_Tintiddling vainly, I proposed
To Kate--and was accepted.
Next day (as you might have supposed),
I was with scorn rejected._
_How oft, tintiddling all alone,
I’m witty, wise, defiant--
But in real life, no one has known
That I’m a mental giant!_
=Ud´ney=, _n._ 1. A beloved bore; one who loves you but does not
understand you; a fond, but stupid relative. 2. An old friend whom
you have outgrown.
Your mother, your doting aunt, your dull, but affectionate husband, your
favorite brother’s wife; or the man your sister is engaged to--udneys
all. You hate to hurt their feelings; would they not do anything in the
world for you? You go to them in your troubles and you forget them in
your pleasures. You hate to write to them, but manage to scrawl hasty
and vapid notes. (See _Uglet_.)
The udney gives you gifts of clothing you can’t possibly wear, and
expects you to rave over them.
Or, the udney is someone who likes you more than you like him. He is
like an affectionate dog, always under foot or licking your hand.
In the pathetic slavery that women endure, not the slavery of women to
men--but that of women to women--the udney has the master hand. The
blindly doting parent, whose daughter “has no secrets from her,” rules
with a rod of sugar. Though her daughter may be old enough to have to
“touch up” her hair--yet so long as she has a “Miss” before her name
will it be her doom to be the willing slave and pet of an unconscious
udney. (See _Varm_.)
_Jane’s mother nothing did forbid;
She was an udney, though--
Because, whatever Janey did
Her mother had to know._
_“Of course he’ll marry you,” one day,
She said to guilty Jane,
“Or else why should he kiss you, pray?”
How could the girl explain!_
=Ug´let=, _n._ 1. An unpleasant duty. 2. Something one puts off too
long.
=Ug´gle=, _v._ 1. To procrastinate respecting the inevitable. 2. To
do something one dislikes.
Having to have your teeth filled is an uglet; you wait and wait, trying
to find the time--and the courage.
Getting up early in the morning is an uglet; inquiring regularly about
convalescents; and getting a spring hat, or a new fall suit--delaying
until you are the last one in town. (See _Vorge_.)
It’s an uglet to clean your top bureau drawer; and calling on the
Wilsons--darning your stockings--or buying a wedding present, or having
your picture taken. (See _Digmix_.)
“Oh, I’ve simply _got_ to do that!” But--how long you delay in inviting
the Ransoms to dinner! It’s an uglet.
Paying the doctor’s bill is the universal uglet. (See _Igmoil_.) But
answering letters from people you haven’t seen for a long time is worse.
_It was an uglet that I feared;
It grew, and grew, and grew,
And long I had to dree my weird--
That deed I dared not do;_
_And yet it must be done! In fear,
Unto my wife, I said:
“Your hat is NOT becoming, dear--
You never should wear red!”_
=Unk=, _n._ 1. An unwelcome present, an inappropriate, undesirable or
distasteful gift. 2. A duplicate wedding present. 3. A souvenir, or
picture postcard.
These are the classic unks that women give to men--unwearable neckties,
hand-embroidered suspenders, smokeless cigars--“La Flor de Chinatown!”
They give them sleeve-button unks, unks made of shiny black leather.
“It’s _so_ hard to find gifts for a man!” (See _Gefoojet_.)
Men give in return, feminine unks--flowers that don’t match a girl’s
gown; perfumery in fancy bottles; a dozen pairs of gloves of an off
color; souvenir jewelry boxes with pictures of the State Capitol on top;
impossible paper cutters; ivory handled nail files elaborately carved,
that will not file. (See _Quisty_ and _Diabob_.)
Women of uncertain age receive unks in the form of bed-shoes, with an
old-maid implication; linen collars, with stiff tabby-cat bows in front,
disgustingly neat--“so nice for business!” There they are, in back of
the bureau drawer, yellowing with age.
When you were married, you received thirty-four wedding unks; nine pie
knives and forty-five pickle forks.
A gold pencil that won’t write is an unk; so is that padded seal volume
of Tennyson on the shelf beneath the center table. (See _Gorgule_.)
_What is an unk? That thing that lies
Upon your bureau, there!
You have outlived your first surprise;
You do not even care._
_Its faint and foolish life is done,
It is a mere negation;--
An unused souvenir of one
Without imagination!_
=Varm=, _n._ 1. The quintessence of sex. 2. One who is
characteristically womanish or man-like.
=Var´mic=, _a._ Monosexually psychologic. 2. Provoking intersexual
antipathy.
A man in love thinks himself attracted to a woman because she is
feminine, and different from him; in reality, it is because he thinks
she is different from other women. He does not discover her varm. Other
girls are vain, tricky, deceitful and illogical--_she_ is a creature
unique.
But, when he is married, she becomes unexpectedly varmic. He watches her
egoistic poses before the mirror, and the first time their
“togetherness” is broken by her confidential delights with another
woman, he sees her varm.
To a man, there is something he hates in woman, if not in women. It’s
the subtle antipathy of sex--the things women tell each other--the
things they _do_--it’s the varm.
But so women secretly hate men--hate their childishness, their
superiority, their insanity and their blindness.
“Just like a woman!” So do men voice their varm.
Your wife’s bureau drawers are varmic. So is a tea-room, or a woman’s
club, or a co-educational college, or the ladies’ dressing room of a
fashionable restaurant. (See _Spigg_.)
Smoking tobacco is no longer varmic. (See _Ovotch_.)
How would you like to see your husband at a prize fight? There varm is
violent.
_I hate a girl--but my Hortense
Is not the average woman;
She has more brains, she has more sense--
In fact, she’s almost human._
_Or, so I thought, until, one day,
She lost that previous charm,
I overheard her talk with May--
Hortense was but a varm!_
=Vilp=, _n._ 1. A bad loser, an unsportsmanlike player. 2. A gloating
victor, or one who is intoxicated by success.
=Vil´pous=, _a._ Unscrupulous, cheating in games.
The vilp is always explaining why he lost the game and usually blaming
the fault upon someone else--he “usually plays a much better game” than
the one you see. This time, it is only because he has the rheumatism, or
didn’t get any sleep last night. (See _Slub_.)
The vilp plays to win--plays for the stakes or the prize. Women vilps
have even been known to cheat at cards to gain a half-pound box of candy
tied with yellow ribbon.
The vilp takes advantage of all his opponent’s slips, calls all fouls,
but does not notice his own. He crows over his victim when he wins, and
sulks when he loses. He bullies his opponent, and whines when he comes
out last. (See _Igmoil_.)
There is no sex to the vilp; the women at the bridge and the men at the
poker table are alike vilpous. (See _Gorm_.)
_There is no sport like Love, and he
Or she who plays the game
Must play to win; and so, maybe,
The vilp is not to blame._
_“All’s fair in love and war,” they say,
So women cheat and fight,
And men compete the vilpous way.
But does that make it right?_
=Voip=, _n._ Food that gives no gastronomic pleasure; any provender
that is filling, but tasteless.
=Voip=, _v._ To eat hurriedly, without tasting.
Every morning, millions of Americans go forth sustained for work, but
cheated out of the pleasures of a real repast--they have merely fed on
voip.
Pop corn was the original voip, discovered by the Pilgrim Fathers. Next
came crackers, ham-sandwiches-without-butter and the sawdusty provender
of railroad lunch counters. (See _Mooble_.)
Ginger snaps are voip; so are buns and doughnuts. Lastly came the reign
of glorified voip in decorated pasteboard packages--breakfast foods of
all degrees from birdseed up to dried peas.
New York has discovered the art of transforming any food into voip, by
the simple expedient of making you eat it standing. (See _Uglet_.)
_At breakfast, when on voip I feed,
Mechanically chewing,
My listless palate does not heed,
Or know what it is doing._
_I oft forget, when I am through,
And wonder if I’ve fed!
I have to feel my stomach to
Be sure I’ve breakfasted!_
=Vorge=, _n._ 1. Voluntary suffering; unnecessary agony. 2. The lure
of the uncertain.
=Vor´gid=, _a._ Morbidly fascinating; interested in horrors.
Peary was a vorgid man; twenty years of freezing half to death did not
conquer his appetite. When he had found the North Pole, he didn’t know
what to do with it. To him, life was just one vorge after another,
pulling sledges, eating shoes and candles, sleeping in a bearskin bag.
(See _Yab_.)
Whence comes the vogue of the vorge? As a child, you could not help
putting your tongue to frozen iron, although you knew the skin would
stick to it; the deed was vorgid. You put beans up your nose, and wheat
up your stocking. You tattooed your arms; and that attractive sore
compelled your touch. Vorgid was castor oil, and bitter medicines. All
these things were horrid, but you did them and boasted of the vorge. It
is vorgid to pull out your own tooth.
But how about him who escorts his homely cousin to a dance, and gets her
partners? Is this less vorgid?
Oh, very vorgid is he who makes a speech, but vorgider far the groom at
a fashionable wedding.
Are you vorgid? Do you enjoy doing palestric exercises in the Gym, or a
cold bath on winter mornings? (See _Gloogo_.) Do you look forward,
vorgidly, to the happy Xmastide?
Vorgid is women’s talk about their “operations.”
_Oh, vorgid ’tis to pant and strain
And tug, the athlete thinks;
And it is vorgid, in the rain,
To golf o’er soggy links._
_But it is vorgider, by far,
Than such palestric feat,
To give that lady in the car
Your Oh-so-longed-for seat!_
=Vo´ri-an-der=, _n._ 1. A woman who chases after men, instead of
being chased. 2. A woman who telephones to men, or invites herself
to dinners at his expense.
=Vo´ri-an-der=, _v._ 1. To act as above described; to inflict oneself
upon an unwilling entertainer. Women’s overt competition for men.
To most men the voriander is anathema. He would prefer to ask the
dullest girl in the world to dinner than to entertain the prettiest, who
has invited herself.
Sly and patent are the tricks of the voriander. She may telephone you:
“Have you got your car out of storage yet?” Or she may say, point-blank:
“Say, isn’t there a dinner coming to me along about now?” (See _Eegot_.)
The voriander is sometimes pretty, but never attractive. Her attempts
are usually dodged, but she still persists. “Confound it, I just _will_
get that man!” she says, and proceeds to voriander.
Never introduce a friend to a voriander. There are other kinder ways of
getting rid of her. A cat can be kissed to death, or smothered in fresh
butter; not the voriander. You have simply to leave town.
The voriander is “crazy” over you, and your purse. She writes you
perfumed notes, she telephones you during business hours. (See
_Drillig_.)
Many vorianders are over thirty years of age.
_Beware the voriander, boy,
With mouth that kisses and torments.
She only loves you to enjoy
Expensive foods at your expense._
_Beware the voriander, let
Her scented notes unanswered be;
She’s after just what she can get;
And when you’re broke, she’ll let you be!_
=Whin´kle=, _n._ 1. Graciousness, with ulterior intent; a
hypocritical politeness. 2. A glow of vanity.
=Whin´kle=, _v._ To appear over-cordial or suspiciously amiable; to
act snobbishly.
Some beam with a merely personal vanity; they whinkle from sheer
self-satisfaction. But when Jones saw me, he whinkled till I thought his
front teeth would spill out of his face. Why? I was talking to a
millionaire. (See _Eegot_.)
So the match-making Mamma whinkles at that desirable young man, who is
calling upon Bessie.
So the book-agent whinkles as he shows you his samples; and the
insurance agent, just before you kick him out.
Whinkles the floor-walker, like the girls at a seashore resort,
beckoning the only nice young man; but the floor-walker whinkles not
when you return a “thirty-six” waist for a “thirty-eight.” (See _Jurp_.)
The mother whinkles when you praise the baby, and the proud undertaker
when he first displays the corpse.
Mark the whinkling landlady, showing the third floor front to the
prospective lodger. “You’ll find it a very comfortable home here;
everyone has always been happy here--very! Nice and sunny ... plenty of
towels ... closet ... nice, soft bed--no bugs in _my_ house. Lovely
bureau, plenty of room for all your things. I am _sure_ you couldn’t do
better.”
How whinkles the pallid clerk at his employer’s jokes.
_When first my motor-car I bought,
The salesman wagged his tail--
He whinkled till I almost thought
He’d kiss me, for the sale._
_But when the poppet-valves were strained,
And had to be repaired--
No whinkling then, when I complained;--
The salesman merely glared!_
=Wij´ji-cle=, _n._ A perverse or contradictory article of furniture;
any household contrivance that is always out of order.
“You’ll find no wijjicles in _this_ house,” said the agent as he
unlocked the front door. “It’s in perfect order.” And yet, before I had
left I had found:
Eight window-screens that wouldn’t go up or down; loose boards in the
dining-room and three on the stairs that squeaked; a leak in the roof, a
smoky fireplace, three cupboard doors that wouldn’t shut, four closet
doors that would swing open, and a long, phlegmatic bath-tub that it
took three-quarters of an hour to fill, through its reluctant faucet.
(See _Quisty_.)
But I must confess I brought in my own wijjicles, too. Reader, you know
them well--
The folding camp-chairs that can’t be unfolded, the three-legged tables
that tip over, the rocking-chairs that bite you on the shins in the dark
and patent spring-rockers that squeak; the unoiled door, the mirrors
with wavy glass, the bureau drawers that stick and the step-ladders that
won’t stay open; the baby-carriages that are always in the way; plush
furniture that sticks, and painted chairs that come off on your back;
screen doors that bang, and rugs on slippery floors, the table that
balances unsteadily.
But the worst of all, is the pencil with its lead broken far up inside
the wood. (See _Moosoo_.)
_I bought a rubber fountain pen;
“Non-leakable,” the clerk
Assured me confidently, when
He showed me how ’twould work._
_But now that wijjicle and I
Into the bath-tub go
When I must write my letters. Why?
Well, things are safer, so!_
=Wog=, _n._ An attached foreign body, an unornament.
=Wog=, _v._ To daub fantastically; to decorate an unconscious victim.
=Wogged=, _p.p._ To have any intrinsic defect or visible superfluity.
=Wog´gy=, _a._ Unpleasantly adorned.
Have you ever seen the gentleman with the Niagara-Falls moustache?
Pretty woggy, what? When beautiful Bessie drinks buttermilk and forgets
her napkin, what can you say? Such things must not be told. Think of
Bessie--with a wog! You must turn away your head and blush--or else
Bessie must. Wogs embarrass. (See _Pooje_.)
But facial stalactites are not the only wogs, alas! Millicent’s hair is
wogged--prithee catch the hairpin before it falls. As you pick a thread
that wogs your wife’s grey gown, she discovers a blonde hair on your
coat-collar, the most embarrassing of all wogs.
Pittsburgh wogs its women with spots of smut, black as court-plaster
patches. You really ought to get a new dress suit, for yours is seven
years old and wildly wogged with grease-spots--where you spilled the
pink-and-green ice cream into your lap and where the Swedish waiter
bathed your shoulders with cauliflower soup. There is a wog of ragged
braid on the bottom of your torn skirt, a running wog in your silk
stocking. (See _Splooch_.)
Don’t get wogged! (See _Zobzib_.)
_I never care for onion soup--
For onion soup, and hash,
And scrambled eggs remind me of
My uncle’s red moustache;_
_For that was what we had to eat
When Uncle Silas, togged
In Sunday raiment, came to dine,
And got his whiskers wogged!_
[Illustration: WOG]
=Wowze=, _n._ 1. A woman who is making a fool of herself and doesn’t
know it. 2. Any ridiculous and undignified object. 3. A spectacular
exhibition of unconscious humor.
=Wowze=, _v._ To act with a misguided belief in one’s charm; to
cavort hopelessly.
Have you ever seen a painfully conscientious amateur tangoist counting
her steps? “One-two-three--_hold_!” She’s a wowze! Have you ever been to
church on Easter Sunday in the country? There are wowzes galore.
An elderly maiden being kittenish--a perfect wowze! An elderly aunt,
talking baby-talk to her infant niece--the wowze pathetic. A female
art-student--the wowze aesthetic.
A wowze is a female poem-reciter in a hot parlor; a fat woman in
swimming; an overgrown girl in short skirts; an angry landlady; a miss
in curl-papers. A shirt waist of plaid silk is a wowze, and a cook,
learning to skate. (See _Frowk_.)
A literary lady, trying to look “artistic”--she’s a wowze and her gown
is wowzier.
The wowze-social:--A woman who doesn’t like it, trying to smoke. (See
_Ovotch_.)
_Miss Henderson was meek and mild,
But, through her black silk veil,
She drank a glass or two of milk--
(She had been drinking ale.)_
_Then, answering our wild applause,
She rose with smiles and bows.
She’d proved that she was clever, but
She was a perfect wowse!_
=Wox=, _n._ A state of placid enjoyment; sluggish satisfaction.
=Wox´y=, _a._ Contented; ruminant; at peace with the world.
As the glutted anaconda, after swallowing a sheep alive, rests for a
benign month or two underneath the tum-tum tree, thinking of home and
mother, while the gross lump in his stomach gradually declines and
lessens--so is the wox of the woman well and appropriately gowned,
especially if that dress of hers has been successfully made over beyond
all recognition.