THE ROYCROFT DICTIONARY
CONCOCTED _by Ali Baba and the Bunch on_ RAINY DAYS
DONE INTO A PRINTED BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR SHOP FOR THE DIVERTISEMENT OF THE GLOOMSTERS MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT 1914 BY ELBERT HUBBARD
ADVERTISING: The education of the public as to who you are, where you are, and what you have to offer in way of skill, talent or commodity. The only man who should not advertise is the man who has nothing to offer the world in way of commodity or service.
ABEL: The first squealer.
ABHORRENCE: 1. A pronounced feeling of dislike in the presence of what is superior or unattainable. 2. To discover one's real self and to slander somebody or something else in revenge. 3. A form of hate that suffers from mal de mer.
ASBESTOS: 1. The white-hope of the damned. 2. A specially prepared paper upon which The Philistine is printed.
ARSON: To be careless in the use of fire. (General Sherman was at times more or less careless in the use of fire on his March to the Sea.--Hon. Henry W. Grady.)
AERONAUT: A person who goes up in order to come down. Hence, a meta physician.
ABNORMAL: To have intelligence, character or genius; to be less stupid than one's neighbor; to be better than the worst; to be one's self. E. g., the writer of these lines.
ABODE: 1. A place where one cleans one's teeth and occasionally sleeps. 2. A long counter with a gutter and a rail at the bottom over which one is served with any liquid in a glass. 3. Dwelling, fireside (obsolete in this sense). 4. A grave.
ABNEGATION: A plan for securing the thing in the easiest and surest way.
ACADEMIC: 1. Of, or pertaining to, fossils; vegetative; parasitic; the opposite of change, viable, evolution. 2. Relating to a society that promotes the love of the static and the immobile. 3. Apish, parrot-like, phonographic.
ADIEU: A prayer of thanksgiving uttered at parting.
ACQUAINTANCE: Any one we bow to politely at the opera or shake hands with warmly in a barroom, but whom we would kick out of our homes. Hence, any one who has refused us a loan.