Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1885 — Humorous Definitions. [ARTICLE]

Humorous Definitions.

A smart, pithy or humorous definition often furnishes a happy illustration of the .proverbial brevity which is the soul of wit. A boy once said that “dust is mud with the juice squeezed out.” A fan, we learn from another juvenile source, is “a thing to brush warm off with;” and a monkey, “a small boy with a tailsalt, “what makes your potatoes taste bad when yon don’t put any on;” wakefulness, “eyes all the time becoming unbuttoned;” and ice, “water that staid out in the cold too late and went to sleep.” A schoolboy, asked to define the word “sob,” whimpered out: “It means when a fellow don’t mean to cry and it bursts out itself.” A youngster was asked to give his idea of the meaning of “responsibility,” so he said: “Well, supposing I had only two buttons on my trousers, and one came off, all the responsibility would rest on the other button.”