d
personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.

PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction
--prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere
virtues and blameless lives.

PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.

PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy of opponent after an imaginary
encounter with oneself.

PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.

PLAGIARISM, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable
priority and an honorable subsequence.

PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom
one has never, never read.

PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for
admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the
Immune. The plague as we of to-day have the happiness to know it is
merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless
objectionableness.

PLAN, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an
accidental result.

PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular
literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of
a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in
artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a
departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose
of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the
sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.

PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic
Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a
frost.

PLAUDITS, n. Coins with which the populace pays those who tickle and
devour it.

PLEASE, v. To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.

PLEASURE, n. The least hateful form of dejection.

PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained
nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a
saturated solution.

PLEBISCITE, n. A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.

PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary
is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he
never exert it.

PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

PLOW, n. An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the
pen.

PLUNDER, v. To take the property of anoth