Part 4

Did you ever ask a grey-gowned brunette the whereabouts of her husband only to find that he had died last week? Rather jiplish!

Anyway, you’re pretty sure to make a jip with your girl, sooner or later--whether you discuss her best hat or her best friend, the talk is apt to be jiplish. To ask a woman her age is a jip.

Never ask a man what his wife said when he got home late--it’s a jip. (See _Skyscrimble_.)

_I asked Bill Green how Mrs. Green Enjoyed her motor trip, And if she liked their limousine-- Believe me, ’twas a jip!_

_It was a jip to talk of her, For she eloped last fall; She ran away with his chauffeur, And took him, car and all!_

=Jir´ri-wig=, _n._ 1. A superficial traveler. 2. The Philistine abroad. 3. A bromide in search of himself.

=Jir´ri-wig=, _v._ To travel with one’s eyes shut. To destroy opportunity.

I met Mrs. Jirriwig first in Paris. She had been there three months, and had spent 87 days with modistes and lingeristes, one day at the Louvre--the rest of the time she had been ill. When she wasn’t trying on gowns, she was in a cab, going to or from the process. (See _Mooble_.)

Later, on the train, I met Mr. Jirriwig, on the way to Venice. The train flew by the bounteous beauties of Lombardy, historic and picturesque. Did Mr. Jirriwig look out of the window? No, he was too busy reading his Baedeker, learning about Venice. In Venice, he spent his time in gondolas, reading up Florence. In Florence he sat at little café tables, turning the pages of his red-covered book and getting acquainted with Rome. So he saw Europe,--in type.

But there are thousands of Jirriwigs in Paris. They have been there for years, and all the French they know is “_Combien?_” They are in a state of perpetual disgust, that things are so different to anything in the United States.

But there are Jirriwigs in New York also. They live in the Subway, in offices and in flats. (See _Cowcat_.)

_Said Mr. Jirriwig, one day, To Mrs. Jirriwig, “Let’s see the Versailles fountains play; They say they’re fine and big!”_

_“Yes,” said his wife, “they’re fine and big, I’ve seen them once, you know!” “Thank God!” said Mr. Jirriwig, “Then I won’t have to go!”_

=Ju´jasm=, _n._ 1. A much-needed relief; a long-desired satisfaction. 2. An expansion of sudden joy.

=Ju-jas´mic=, _a._ Offering relief from suffering, or an escape from ennui.

Thank God the train has started! So, after the long, dreary wait on a side-track, your heart expands in a delicious jujasm. As noise after long silence, so is silence after much noise, a jujasm. (See _Gollohix_.)

After your slow recovery, jujasmic is the doctor’s dictum, “I think we’ll have to get you up tomorrow.”

Why is Helen’s face with wild jujasm alight? Dilatory Dick has at last proposed. (See _Xenogore_.)

As deep as the grim horror of the dentist’s deed, just so high does your spirit rise in jujasm when the tooth is out.

Spring! After the long suspense is over, the first day of balm and warmth brings jujasm to your heart.

As a hot drink on a sleigh-ride; as food after a long fast--so is the first sight of women to a sailor, after his eighteen months at sea, jujasmic.

Last night, I took high-browed Harriet to the theatre, and she talked of her soul, while I perished. Oh, the rise of the curtain on that third act of farcical folly! It was a jujasm. (See _Orobaldity_.)

_Jujasmic is it when, at night, Your baby stops his wails; Or when the land, at last in sight, The seasick traveller hails._

_But what are such jujasms to this-- (I hope your memory’s strong,) That first ecstatic, rapturous kiss You waited for, so long!_

=Jul´lix=, _n._ 1. A mental affinity, with a similar taste and inclination. 2. One who knew you when you were a child.

“He speaks my own language!” Smile if you will, and call it sentimentality, but some there are, your jullixes, who laugh at the same jokes as you and weep at the same sights. Out of the ruck of social five-o’clocks you pick them, like single pearls out of dead oysters, and they shine in your memory forever. 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!” He knew you when you wore short trousers; and he, too, knows your language--that all but forgotten speech of your youth. (See _Thusk_.)

Is she a jullix who was once engaged to the man whom you have married? A jullix? Yes, but alas, she knows too much for friendship!

A woman’s jullix is one who knows her real age.

_How Elsie stared! Did Elsie guess What bond united her To that girl opposite her? Yes! It was her jullix, sure._

_Oh, not from souls akin, and less From friendship did she know her; But both had bought the self-same dress In the same department store!_

=Jurp=, _n._ 1. A haughty inferior; a saucy underling. 2. An impudent servant or clerk.

=Jur´pid=, _a._ Insubordinate or impertinent.

Cooks, brakemen, shop girls are often jurpid. The whistling, gum-chewing office boy, who won’t take in your card and says, “The manager’s out,” is jurpid.

The officious policeman, the barber who talks, the headwaiter, who always gives you the table you don’t want, is jurpid when you object. (See _Moosoo_.)

What good does it do to report the jurp? You’ll only have on your conscience the fact that a man with a big family has lost his job. And so, you swallow his jurpid jibes.

“Well,” says the jurpid milliner, “you _said_ you wanted a red hat, and this hat’s red. We ain’t got anything _redder_. If I’d a-known you wanted _blue_, why didn’t you say so, and I’d a-shown you some purple ones! You can see for yourself green’s more becoming, though.”

Colored maids, messenger boys and janitors cannot help being jurps--they were born that way. (See _Splooch_.)

_It was a jurp who answered back, Impertinent and pert; A filthy beast, who drove a hack-- You should have seen his shirt!_

_And I a gentleman! Whee-ew, What jurpid things he said! I’d given him a dollar, too! But it was made of lead._

=Kid´loid=, _n._ 1. A precocious or self-assertive infant; an _enfant terrible_. 2. A hotel or stage child. Any juvenile person who is too ubiquitous.

=Kid´loid=, _a._ Impertinent or offensive, in a childish way.

In the hotel the kidloid is manufactured and developed from shy and timid modesty to the final perfect stages of conspicuous vulgarity. He is like an improbable old man, or a cynical hag but without the charm of age.

The kidloid, in comic papers, hides under the couch when his sister’s beau is calling, and is subsequently bribed to silence. In actual life, however, he is much more offensive when you know he’s about. (See _Vorge_.)

The kidloid is called upon to recite “pieces” before company, and invariably makes a fool of his parents.

The kidloid makes conversation an agony, and has the apparent power of a multiple personality. He seems like at least a dozen persons when he is in the room.

Kidloids are created by fond and idolatrous parents by the simple process of giving them their own way.

The stage kidloid is a cross between an intelligent ape and a mummy. The hotel kidloid is an anthropoid dynamo. (See _Gollohix_.)

_The Kidloid at the Beach Hotel We thought a model child, For he behaved so very well-- He was so meek and mild._

_But every girl, for comfort’s sake, Had paid him, every day That she had company, to make That kidloid stay away!_

=Kipe=, _v._ To inspect critically; to appraise pragmatically; to eye with jealousy or envy.

=Kipe=, _n._ A woman’s glance at another woman.

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_.)

Employer kipes the applicant for position, accepts or rejects. The poker-player, with his last blue chip in the pot, kipes his four-card draw. The fastidious smoker kipes the gift cigar. The golfer kipes his “lie.”

Says Aunt Samanthy Hanks to Mary Jane at the county fair, as she kipes the patchwork bedquilts in the gallery, “Mine’s better’n her’n.” Says the mother of the bride, as she kipes the wedding presents spread out on the table, “H’m! his folks must be close-fisted.” (See _Gefoojet_.)

As you whiz, motoring through the park, a car flashes by--but not too fast for your automobile host to kipe it: “1913 36-6 ‘Strangler’-- No good!”

So do the village girls kipe the strange young man in town.

_Carlotta kipes at Ermyntrude, And Ermyntrude at Rose; And every stitch that each has on Each other lady knows._

_Each lady knows the other’s faults, Her quality and size, And just how old and good she is; Would men were half as wise!_

=Krip´sle=, _n._ A worrying physical sensation, an invisible annoyance absorbing one’s attention.

=Krip´sly=, _a._ Distracting, distrait, unmentionably provocative.

Walking on spilt sugar is kripsly.

That fugitive morsel of walnut-meat in the cavity of your bi-cuspid, which your tongue chases so thoughtfully, but in vain--a fascinating kripsle, as kripsly as a loose tooth! (See _Vorge_.)

Has a hairpin fallen down your back? Smile, and don’t be kripsly; beware that faraway look that tells the story! And when through that hole in your stocking your big toe sticks out, don’t be kripsled!

The ancient Stoics, like the modern Christian Scientists, declared that all kripsles were Error. 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 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_.)

_Perhaps you think that smile you caught, Her introspective air, Her pensive mien--is caused by thought Too shy for you to share._

_Ah, so it is! With all your tact You fail. It is no use! For she is kripsled by the fact That her left garter’s loose._

=Lal´li-fac-tion=, _n._ A verbose story, a joke repeated.

=Lal´li-fy=, _v._ 1. To act too slowly; to delay. 2. To give an over-painstaking or super-elaborate performance.

Did you ever hear an Englishman lallify his conversation with, “What I mean to say is this,” and “if you know what I mean” and “do you see”? So the shop girl lallifies her talk with “Listen here!” or “Say, listen!” while she gropes for an idea. The preacher, barren of fresh thoughts, lallifies his meager sermon. “Fourthly, beloved brethren--” (See _Drillig_.)

A “talky” play is lallified till the house walks out. Like a song sung too slowly, so is the lallified talk of the young man who doesn’t want to escort that particular girl home. (See _Vorge_ and _Xenogore_.)

The lallified book: Wide, wide margins and thick, thick paper--or, maybe it is lallified only with adjectives or adverbs.

Have you ever heard that man Gerrish tell his favorite story, lallifying it with dialect-dialogue till you yawned? Then, after you have forced a laugh, he lallifies the point with reminiscent unction, repeating it reflectively, itching for more applause.

The consummate lallification is two women saying good-bye to each other. (See _Wumgush_.)

_For months and months the Hemmingways Have lallified of Baby, How Baby walks and talks and plays-- And have I listened? Maybe._

_But now the time has come, today, To lallify that pair; For I am working on a play, And talk about it there!_

=Le´o-lump=, _n._ 1. An interrupter of conversations; one who always brings the talk back to himself. 2. An egoist; one who thinks you are necessarily interested in what interests him.

“When I was in Italy,” I began, carelessly--

“Oh, dear, I’ve never been out of New York!” she whined. “I do wish I could go to Italy sometime!”

She was a leolump. I could not mention anything without her applying it to herself. 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. (See _Blurb_.)

He has a million subjects ready in the pigeon-hole marked “I.”

Women are seldom leolumps, for they never allow the conversation to depart from the subject of themselves. And so they never have to interrupt, or bring the topic back.

_He breaks into your talk, and cries, “Oh, that reminds me,”--then Oh, how his tale your patience tries! But you begin again._

_A leolump you cannot shame; His head is like a fly’s; His brain is small, but all the same, He has a thousand “I’s.”_

=Loob´lum=, _n._ 1. A pleasant thing that is bad for one; rich, but dangerous food. 2. A flatterer; flattery.

=Loob´loid=, _a._ 1. Sweet, but indigestible.

Loobloid is the broiled live lobster and the hot mince pie. Loobloid, ice water when you are warm and whiskey when you are cold.

But human nature still woos the looblum. For youthful inexperience, green apples and the first cigar; for age, ennui and discouragement,--opium, morphine and cocaine.

Yes, all those things of which the bromide says, “I like them, but they don’t like me,” are loobloid. Black coffee at night and a cocktail in the morning--both are looblums.

And yet, the mental looblums are worse; corroding the character with sweetest poisons. How rapturously we gulp them down! You ask criticism on what you know is bad, and enjoy the loobloid praise. On his opening night, the ambitious playwright makes his speech in answer to the looblums of applause. (See _Wumgush_.)

On the morning after her wedding-day, the blue-nosed bride reads loobloid descriptions of her beauty at the ceremony.

Most loobloid, but most sweet! The flattery of the fond and doting parent. (See _Culp_.)

_My after-dinner speech was lame, No gift of gab is mine; The chairman praised me, all the same, He said my talk was fine._

_I had been terrified, and I Made blunders that were frightful; The chairman lied--but what’s a lie? His looblum was delightful!_

=Ma-chiz´zlum=, _n._ 1. A thinly disguised boredom. 2. A disappointing spectacle. 3. The apotheosis of the obvious.

=Ma-chiz´zle=, _v._ 1. To attempt unsuccessfully to please. 2. To try too hard to like something.

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? 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 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!_

=Meem=, _n._ An artificial half light that women love; a charitable obscurity; a becoming gloom.

=Meem´y=, _a._ Obscure, dim, uncertain.

From a brilliantly lighted hall outside, you plunge into the meemy parlors wherein shadows flit, vague, uncertain. You stumble over a rug. A silhouette rises and comes forth to meet you. How many are there there? Who are they? Mysterious is the meem!

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. (See _Kipe_.)

There’s a dim, religious meem, the shadowy penumbra of great cathedrals--the sentimental meem, the sad gloom of the funeral--the amorous meem, the starlit darkness, wherein lovers linger.

The meemy woman always sits with her back to the light, to watch you from an ambush. (See _Squinch_.)

Candles are meemy, especially red ones--except when used properly, in clusters.

Still, a meem does keep out the flies.

_All meemy was the studio, And meemy maidens--wait! Say, were they maidens? Heavens, no! Are maidens thirty-eight?_

_Well, anyway, they passed for such, For candles make a meem That women think disguises much. Things are not what they seem._

=Moo´ble=, _n._ 1. A mildly amusing affair; a moderate success. 2. A person or thing over whom it is difficult to be enthusiastic.

=Moo´bly=, _adj._, _adv._ Innocuous, feebly, without unction.

The Samoans have a word which means, “A-party-is-approaching-which-contains-neither -a-clever-man-nor-a-pretty-woman.” 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.”

Moobly novels are written by--well, of course you know already. Moobly foods: cornstarch custard, warm iced tea, vanilla ice cream. The W.C.T.U. is a mooble. So is a commencement essay, and most tall, blonde women.

But the perfect mooble is the man you used to be engaged to. (See _Thusk_.)

_At first I thought her a genius bright, Almost an angel--out of sight! But the second time that I went to call I found her a mooble, after all._

_Only a mooble, and then she wrote, Oh, what a moobly, moobly note! And how can you wonder my love should end? She began her letter to me, “Dear Friend”!_

=Moo´soo=, _a._ 1. Sulky, out of sorts, blue, taciturn, discontented. 2. Unsuccessful; getting out of order; going wrong, delayed.

Moosoo is a mild form of “the dumps.” You are moosoo while waiting for someone who is late, especially late for dinner; when your dress doesn’t quite fit, or isn’t quite becoming.

Moosoo is the secondary stage of getting over acute ill humor. It is the mood of the wife in her second year of marriage.

Moosoo is the clerk who is discontented with his position. Moosoo is the salesman, when you return goods or exchange them. (See _Jurp_.)

Moosoo is the brakeman, when the train is delayed.

The wall-flower at the dance is moosoo, though her smiles are pungent.

Moosoo is the maiden when the young man fails to propose, although she shows it not.

Moosoo is the interested escort, when the restaurant music is too loud at dinner. (See _Huzzlecoo_.)

Children are moosoo, when they can’t go to the circus; the traveling salesman, when his cigar leaks; and even the polite husband, when the burned chops are set before him.

The weather, itself, can be moosoo, with clouds and dullness for weeks at a time.

_The day was moosoo; Mary Ann Was moosoo, so was I; And moosoo were the girl and man Whom we’d invited--why?_

_Why did we sulk, disgusted, far From home, discouraged, blue? Because my brand new motor-car Alas, was moosoo, too!_

=Nink=, _n._ 1. A useless “antique” object, preserved in worship of the picturesque. 2. An imitation of a by-gone style.

=Nink´ty=, _a._ Architecturally dishonest.

You buy your ninks at “Ye Olde Shoppe” and by that “Ye”--you shall know the ninkty. For a nink is a brass candlestick with no candle in it; the pewter mugs and platters, unpolished, on the sideboard; the old china, dusty and unused upon the wall; old tiles and brass knockers.

The old flax-wheel in the corner is a nink; the framed old sporting prints of horse races and stagecoaches; the framed theatre bills. Pompeian bronze tripods, never lighted, in hotel corridors. (See _Gorgule_.)

A beefsteak party is a nink, and May-day dances and pageants; anything revived, revamped for modern use. Doors, covered with nails and decorative hinges bolted on; things sewed with thongs; imitation parchment scrolls. Whale-oil lamps, ships’ lanterns; almost any object of leather, copper, or brass. (See _Gefoojet_.)

Architectural ninks are imitation beams in the ceiling; hollow columns; furniture, with imitation mortises and pegs.

The ninkiest nink of all is the framed motto on the wall, or a legend painted over the fireplace.

_The ninks that Mr. Parvenu Has bought, because “artistic,” Are “genuine antiques,” though you Call them anachronistic._

_But still, one nink is not disgraced-- That sun dial he got Is now appropriately placed; He put it on his yacht!_

=Nodge=, _n._ 1. The only one of its kind or set. 2. 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.

Nodgy is the Methodist minister at a poker party; nodgy the cut-up at prayer meeting, or the ugly damsel at the ball.

The modest country girl is nodgy with women who smoke cigarettes. (See _Ovotch_.)

How long have you saved that old lace yoke--waiting for something to put it on. Throw it away! It’s a nodge. (See _Gefoojet_.)