Gelett Burgess

“ 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. ”

“ Queer, isn’t it—a man who’s always “full of schemes” is always a snosh, while a crank with one idea may succeed. Why? A snosh is always imitating something. He is the theatrical manager who follows up a successful play with a third-rate duplicate.
But, talking about plays, did you ever talk to a society woman who was writing one? It’s a snosh. In the first place, she won’t finish it until the year 1977 and then it will take her a double-lifetime to find a big enough fool to produce it. Broadway is lined with snoshes—but the word isn’t necessarily theatrical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ The xenogore is a person who doesn’t belong, but doesn’t know it. It is the shopper who paws over goods, and prevents customers from buying; an extra woman, who drops in when you want to play whist; or the creature who appears at dinner-time, when you have just enough for the family and no more; who invites himself into your motor-car, crowding you miserably. He annoys you when you are talking business, and spoils the sale.
Children in the room, when you are calling, are xenogores. (See Kidloid.) ”

“ 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!
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Meem, n. ”

“ Those burning feet in the tight shoes! Yes, you are critched, but at the same time you have the moral support of being becomingly and fashionably clad. A critch is half pride and half madness—it’s the martyrdom of fashion. ”

“ But we are wiser today and know the hollowness of the edicle.
The edicle is the college professor who has listened to his own talk so long that he has mistaken knowledge for wisdom. The book-worm who has learned to believe that literature is greater than life. (See Snosh.)
A woman is an edicle, who prates “new thought” and juggles the trite phrases of a philosophy too heavy for her comprehension. (See Orobaldity.) A man is an edicle when he quotes Browning or Karl Marx or Herbert Spencer. Most clergymen are edicles, and persons who rave over pictures they don’t understand. ”

“ A quink is the Welch rarebit face, the expression of one serving at tennis, or playing a difficult pool shot,—lifting the ball out of a bad golf hazard.
Women are quinked when they open a telegram; a boy, as he lights a fire-cracker. A girl, when in front of the glass, as she turns around to see if her underskirt is hanging down behind. A man, when he reads the ticker tape, during a panic, or is buttoning up the back of his wife’s dress.
A waiter is quinked when his customer takes the change from the plate—how much will be the tip? ”

“ 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.) ”

“ Have you ever been “turned around,” coming out of a theatre, after an exciting play? Right is left and west is east. You are in a gowyop. It is long before you can turn yourself about and make the world seem normal.
The husband who has just shaved off his beard is a gowyop to his wife. And his wife is a gowyop, after she has tinted her hair bright red. (See Spigg.)
The gowyop is like that room you see in the mirror,—so like, and yet so different. Your house, the day after the funeral, is a gowyop—everything seems so strange. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ There’s nothing of the aristocracy of pain in the slub. It is, so to speak, a mere working illness.
Men’s slubs, however, are more intense than women’s. A man when he has a slub, says, “Oh pshaw! it’s nothing.” But he expects, all the same, to be assiduously attended. Every woman in the household must minister to his misery. (See Varm.)
Women have slubs innumerable, and for the most part say nothing about them, unless they want an excuse for staying away from a party. When the society woman has a slub, she sends for a good looking doctor. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ After your long tramp in the rain, after your bath and hot dinner, you sit by the open fire in a wox.
There is no joy but calm, say the Buddhists; it’s better to be woxy than excited with rapture. (See Jujasm.)
The author is in a wox; his story has been accepted. Woxy is the actor in a good hotel at last, after three weeks of one-night stands; when he pushes the bell, something delightful is sure to happen. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ At pool, tennis or golf, the spillix aids the amateur with proverbial luck. A spillix is winning a prize in the lottery; is the business deal, that unexpectedly goes through; is meeting an influential friend when you are in your best clothes. Getting a position by inadvertently happening to be right on the spot.
A bargain is a spillix; an exciting conversation overheard on the telephone. (See Frowk.) ”

“ You may be too cool in decolleté, or too warm in your furs, but vanity vanquishes the critch.
You are critched when you have a picture taken, but that radiant smile survives. At private theatricals all the actors are critched with tights and swords and furbelows—trying to appear at ease. (See Wowze.) ”

“ Do women criticise each other to their faces? Do they find fault with their chocolates, their looks, their clothes, their jests? No, not until the front door is closed; till then, they slobber wumgush. (See Varm.)
And yet, if one man offers another a cigarette, the tobacco may be called “rotten!” without peril or anger.
Men have small use for wumgush; their compliments are profane ridicule and simulated enmity.
A man calls his best friend a “damned fool”; a woman calls her worst enemy, “My dear!” ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Ah, but you suffer, not only for your hygog, but for another’s: The actor, who forgets his lines, the parlor elocutionist who pauses and cannot get the next verse—the hygog is an agony unendurable. (See Splooch.)
Hygogical is the strained anxiety of one who waits in nervous suspense for someone to meet her at the station in time to catch the train. ”

“ Paint, powder, dyed hair, court plaster patches, artificial dimples, highly manicured and rouged nails, blacking under the eyes, whiting under the chin, rouged ears, lead-penciled eyebrows, loaded eye-lashes are spigg. (See Wowze.)
Jewelry is spigg; spigg is the treasure-chest of would-be beauty, the ammunition of the bogus Cupid.
In some latitudes, ladies are spigged with tattoo marks and nose-rings; in others, with marceled hair and low-necked gowns. (See Varm.)
Men spigg themselves with fancy socks and curled moustaches. ”

“ People used to be yabs on religion, but you seldom see a gospel yab, now that Dowie has passed from sight. Still, there’s a pretty pronounced Christian Science yab on in idealistic circles. Business yabs, yes; but your wife won’t stand for it at the supper-table, unless your guest is a good, heavy buyer. (See Eegot.)
The musician lives in a yab-world of his own. He doesn’t understand ordinary English.
Some men are yabs over women, some have a horrible baseball yab that will last over way into February; but the worst of all is a yabby actor, telling you how good he is. (See Leolump.) ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 elp is a clever promiser, who doesn’t make good. You never can pin him down,—he always escapes you. He won’t do what he has promised, or pay his debts; but his explanations are always all-but-convincing.
The tradesman is an elp, who promises to deliver those provisions in time for dinner, and always has a good excuse. The ladies’ tailor is an elp—the suit is never done on time. (See Goig.) ”

“ Why try to describe the gollohix? It’s the piano in the next flat at midnight; it’s the turkey-trotting overhead; it’s the phonograph across the hall. (See Jujasm.)
Why do they put in your neighbor’s coal so late in the evening, when you have tonsilitis? The coal-man loves a gollohix, as a chauffeur loves a cut-out motor, as a city child loves firecrackers on the 3rd of July.
A musical comedy makes a good gollohix when you sit in the front row next to the drum, but a crying baby at four o’clock in the morning makes the best of all. (See Kidloid.) ”

“ 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. ”