Part 6

Children, however, are oftener slubby--when they don’t want to go to school or to church the slub works overtime. (See _Uglet_ and _Moosoo_.)

Shop-girls are not allowed to have slubs.

_“I have a slub!” the maiden said, “I cannot go with you. “You’ll have to go without me, Fred!” And Fred felt slubby, too._

_But when, at ten o’clock, or so, He found his girl disdainful Maxixing with his hated foe Fred’s slub grew really painful!_

=Snosh=, _n._ 1. Vain talk; 1000 words to the square idea. 2. A talker from whom no results are expected; one who cannot be taken seriously. 3. A project or enterprise that is born dead.

Wall Street is where the snosh abounds. Advertise, circularize, collect and disappear--that’s how they work the gold-mine snosh. (See _Alibosh_.)

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. The smart restaurant that insists on evening dress is a snosh--and so is an actress who says she loves you.

In Reno dwells the married snosh. Any wedding performed upon a bride and groom under the age of 25 is a snosh. So is a marriage with a Count. (See _Pawdle_.)

_Miss Pittsburgh swore that she would wed A title, and by Gosh, Miss Pittsburgh did; her father paid A million for a snosh._

_And now, although he swears at her, It is a Count that swears, And over eyes he’s black-and-blued A coronet she wears!_

=Spigg=, _n._ 1. Any decoration of overt vanity. 2. Extrinsic charms. 3. Things worn obviously to attract notice.

=Spig´get-y=, _a._ Prinked, elaborately adorned.

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. In the cart-horse parade, Old Dobbin spiggs his braided tail with ribbons.

For spigg is nothing but a vanity that is not ashamed to advertise itself; but advertising is one of the most difficult of arts, wherefore now its appeal is as grotesque as the three fat seasick plumes in the dowager’s hair, and now it is as delicate as the violets in a debutante’s bosom.

_So spiggety was cousin Grace, When I was there last night, I could not even see her face; She was a shocking sight!_

_“Why all this flour and whitewash, dear? Why so much black-and-red?” “Because I’d feel so nude, this year, Without my spigg,” she said._

=Spil´lix=, _n._ 1. Undeserved good luck; accidental success. 2. A lucky stroke, beyond one’s normal ability.

=Spil´lix-y=, _a._ Exceptional, lucky, uncharacteristic. Untrue to “form.”

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_.)

Thousands of people, intending to cross on the Titanic, took the next boat following--and boasted of the spillix.

It’s a spillix, to find money in the street; also to discover that the chaperon is more charming than the girl herself. Through a spillix, you blunder into success. (See _Zobzib_.)

Every young May that weds a rich old December, prays for a spillix, but he seldom dies to leave her a fascinating widow in becoming robes of black.

A spillix is a lucid interval, or the bright remark of a fool.

_His first shot to the bull’s eye flew-- He would not shoot--for then It was a spillix, and he knew He would not score again._

_So, when he wed the girl he sought, We thought ’twas rather funny-- It was a spillix; for she thought, Alas, that he had money!_

=Splooch=, _n._ 1. A failure, a ruin. 2. One who doesn’t know his business; a bad amateur. 3. Exorbitantly overpaid service.

One thinks at first naturally of a restaurant; there are more splooch waiters than anything else in the world. Next, come servant girls, the splooch that burns the soup and leaves the salt out of the bread. A cake with an ingrowing stomach is a splooch. A suit of clothes that looks anxious about the shoulderblades--wet hay--bug-eaten potato plants and pears with worms inside--splooches all.

Most musical comedies are splooches, most stories in the magazines, most janitors. (See _Jurp_.)

What then, of the dentist who pulls out the sound tooth by mistake, or the surgeon who takes out your appendix but leaves his eye-glasses inside? He’s a medico-splooch.

Then there’s the vaudeville juggler who splooches the balls and the singer who’s off the key. (See _Snosh_.)

Every day on Wall Street ten thousand lambs make splooch investments, hoping to become captains of finance.

_I’ll never dine at Mack’s again; The splooch that slings the eats He makes me wait an hour, and then He serves me corn, for beets!_

_Last night I ordered Irish stew, And there my wife’s old brooch That she had lost a year or two Was hidden in the splooch!_

=Spuzz=, _n._ 1. Mental energy, an aggressive intellect. 2. Stamina, force, spice.

=Spuz´zard=, _n._ 1. An active, forceful thinker. 2. A cocktail with a “kick” in it.

=Spuz´zy=, _a._ 1. Highly seasoned. Charged with brain-electricity.

Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm have spuzz. Demiourgos, maker of men, gave them an extra dash of the tabasco. (See _Persotude_.)

Spuzz in acting, in writing, or in business is what brings in the money.

Spuzz welcomes competition; it is always ready for the fray.

You can’t down the spuzzard; he is elastic, and bounces up after every failure.

The spuzzard is the girl who could “just die dancing.” She answers her letters the day they are received.

The farmer with no spuzz to him can never lift the mortgage; but the spuzzy intensive Italian down the road is educating his sons to be doctors and lawyers.

Spuzz is that getaheadative zip, tang, and racehorse enthusiasm that has for its motto, “Do it now.”

A good Welch rarebit has spuzz; so has a dry Martini--but it’s the wrong kind. (See _Looblum_.)

_How I admire a Suffragette! No matter what she does, She has red corpuscles, you bet! She has a lot of spuzz!_

_And yet--I would not marry her; But some shy, timid elf, Some clinging flower shall be my bride; I’ll find the spuzz, myself!_

=Squinch=, _n._ A nervous, anxious state of mind; a palpitating desire to succeed beyond one’s deserts.

=Squinch=, _v._ To watch and wait, hoping things will turn one’s own way; to anticipate.

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.

You squinch the stock market for a rise or fall; but no matter how you squinch U. S. Steel Common, there’s always someone squinching it the other way.

Then there’s the lottery squinch--or there used to be, wondering if the winning number will end in 6.

The candidate is on the squinch before election with his ear to the ground. President Wilson squinches Mexico as anxiously as a village girl squinches her beau for a proposal. (See _Quink_.)

See the House Manager of a theatre in the box office squinching the crowd coming in for the evening performance! So I squinch this word, hoping that it will become popular.

Behind his geography, little Willie squinches his teacher, as he reads, “The White Slaver’s Revenge,” or, “Saved by Eugenics.” (See _Kipe_.)

_I knew that I was squinched, because When e’er I spoke of rings, Or wedding bells, or marriage laws, She looked unuttered things._

_But still I flirted, standing pat, And did not yield an inch; I told her I was married--that Was how I fooled her squinch!_

=Tash-i-va´tion=, _n._ The art of replying by means of reciprocal tones.

=Tash´i-vate=, _v._ To reply without attention; to speak aimlessly, or without interest, as to a child.

=Tash´i-vat-ed=, _p.p._ Absorbed in more interesting things; inattentive; answered perfunctorily.

Have you acquired the art of tashivation? Can you read the newspaper right along through your wife’s gossip, or your little daughter’s prattle? This is the secret of true domesticity; it is the science of being a husband.

The actress has an ear trained to distinguish emotions, and a tongue trained to answer them without the conscious use of her brain. A friend tells her a long, dull story, and her mind wanders through the Elysian Fields of her own experiences, unheeding. Suddenly the tale ends--“And there she was, right in the room with him!” What was it all about? Never mind, the answer is easy: “Well, _what_ do you think of that?” (See _Drillig_.)

Tashivation is answering without listening, as one speaks to a beggar--as one talks at a crowded reception, as one answers the man who asks for a loan.

When a man explains machinery to a woman, she tashivates, her mind on pleasanter things; and so, when a woman explains fashions to a man. (See _Varm_.)

_Why do I tashivate, and say “Oh, yes,” and “Really?”--“Yes?” Because although she talks, I try To read my book, I guess._

_I nod and smile, and speak, sedate; My wife keeps on her chatter. So long as I can tashivate Her questions do not matter._

=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. Thusky are last winter’s styles. (See _Gowyop_.)

While you are abroad, the American newspapers are thusky; when you are returning, all Europe is a thusk.

Thusky is the house you once lived in; your old sweetheart of college days.

Which is the thuskiest,--a dead actor, an ex-president, or a popular hero, now laid on the shelf?

_I met a thusk the other day; Three times I had to look Before I recognised him--say, ’Twas only Doctor Cook!_

_How thusky, now, his polar jest! As thusky as the way A joke would sound, if ’twere expressed In slang of yesterday!_

=Tin´tid-dle=, _n._ 1. An imaginary conversation. 2. A witty retort, thought of too late, a mental postscript.

=Tin-tid-di-la´tion=, _n._ Optimistic day-dreaming.

Oh, the bright reply you thought of, after you had gone--the crushing answer that you _might_ have given! Who does not know the tardy tintiddle? The questions you forgot to ask, the terms you forgot to make, the repairs you did not ask. _Was_ there any closet in that corner room? Now, _did_ that include water, or not? Tintiddling comes with tantalizing thought. (See _Iobink_.)

When you rehearsed your speech the night before, the chorus of applause came tintiddling to your ears. And when tintiddling you proposed to the girl, she fell gratefully into your arms.

When in tintiddilation, you applied for that position, how noble was your pose--how convincing were your words! But they were only tintiddles, and tintiddles never come out as you expect. (See _Bimp_.)

Chastely tintiddling are the wedding anticipations of the bride! (See _Jujasm_.)

_Tintiddling vainly, I proposed To Kate--and was accepted. Next day (as you might have supposed), I was with scorn rejected._

_How oft, tintiddling all alone, I’m witty, wise, defiant-- But in real life, no one has known That I’m a mental giant!_

=Ud´ney=, _n._ 1. A beloved bore; one who loves you but does not understand you; a fond, but stupid relative. 2. An old friend whom you have outgrown.

Your mother, your doting aunt, your dull, but affectionate husband, your favorite brother’s wife; or the man your sister is engaged to--udneys all. You hate to hurt their feelings; would they not do anything in the world for you? You go to them in your troubles and you forget them in your pleasures. You hate to write to them, but manage to scrawl hasty and vapid notes. (See _Uglet_.)

The udney gives you gifts of clothing you can’t possibly wear, and expects you to rave over them.

Or, the udney is someone who likes you more than you like him. He is like an affectionate dog, always under foot or licking your hand.

In the pathetic slavery that women endure, not the slavery of women to men--but that of women to women--the udney has the master hand. The blindly doting parent, whose daughter “has no secrets from her,” rules with a rod of sugar. Though her daughter may be old enough to have to “touch up” her hair--yet so long as she has a “Miss” before her name will it be her doom to be the willing slave and pet of an unconscious udney. (See _Varm_.)

_Jane’s mother nothing did forbid; She was an udney, though-- Because, whatever Janey did Her mother had to know._

_“Of course he’ll marry you,” one day, She said to guilty Jane, “Or else why should he kiss you, pray?” How could the girl explain!_

=Ug´let=, _n._ 1. An unpleasant duty. 2. Something one puts off too long.

=Ug´gle=, _v._ 1. To procrastinate respecting the inevitable. 2. To do something one dislikes.

Having to have your teeth filled is an uglet; you wait and wait, trying to find the time--and the courage.

Getting up early in the morning is an uglet; inquiring regularly about convalescents; and getting a spring hat, or a new fall suit--delaying until you are the last one in town. (See _Vorge_.)

It’s an uglet to clean your top bureau drawer; and calling on the Wilsons--darning your stockings--or buying a wedding present, or having your picture taken. (See _Digmix_.)

“Oh, I’ve simply _got_ to do that!” But--how long you delay in inviting the Ransoms to dinner! It’s an uglet.

Paying the doctor’s bill is the universal uglet. (See _Igmoil_.) But answering letters from people you haven’t seen for a long time is worse.

_It was an uglet that I feared; It grew, and grew, and grew, And long I had to dree my weird-- That deed I dared not do;_

_And yet it must be done! In fear, Unto my wife, I said: “Your hat is NOT becoming, dear-- You never should wear red!”_

=Unk=, _n._ 1. An unwelcome present, an inappropriate, undesirable or distasteful gift. 2. A duplicate wedding present. 3. A souvenir, or picture postcard.

These are the classic unks that women give to men--unwearable neckties, hand-embroidered suspenders, smokeless cigars--“La Flor de Chinatown!” They give them sleeve-button unks, unks made of shiny black leather. “It’s _so_ hard to find gifts for a man!” (See _Gefoojet_.)

Men give in return, feminine unks--flowers that don’t match a girl’s gown; perfumery in fancy bottles; a dozen pairs of gloves of an off color; souvenir jewelry boxes with pictures of the State Capitol on top; impossible paper cutters; ivory handled nail files elaborately carved, that will not file. (See _Quisty_ and _Diabob_.)

Women of uncertain age receive unks in the form of bed-shoes, with an old-maid implication; linen collars, with stiff tabby-cat bows in front, disgustingly neat--“so nice for business!” There they are, in back of the bureau drawer, yellowing with age.

When you were married, you received thirty-four wedding unks; nine pie knives and forty-five pickle forks.

A gold pencil that won’t write is an unk; so is that padded seal volume of Tennyson on the shelf beneath the center table. (See _Gorgule_.)

_What is an unk? That thing that lies Upon your bureau, there! You have outlived your first surprise; You do not even care._

_Its faint and foolish life is done, It is a mere negation;-- An unused souvenir of one Without imagination!_

=Varm=, _n._ 1. The quintessence of sex. 2. One who is characteristically womanish or man-like.

=Var´mic=, _a._ Monosexually psychologic. 2. Provoking intersexual antipathy.

A man in love thinks himself attracted to a woman because she is feminine, and different from him; in reality, it is because he thinks she is different from other women. 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.

But so women secretly hate men--hate their childishness, their superiority, their insanity and their blindness.

“Just like a woman!” So do men voice their varm.

Your wife’s bureau drawers are varmic. So is a tea-room, or a woman’s club, or a co-educational college, or the ladies’ dressing room of a fashionable restaurant. (See _Spigg_.)

Smoking tobacco is no longer varmic. (See _Ovotch_.)

How would you like to see your husband at a prize fight? There varm is violent.

_I hate a girl--but my Hortense Is not the average woman; She has more brains, she has more sense-- In fact, she’s almost human._

_Or, so I thought, until, one day, She lost that previous charm, I overheard her talk with May-- Hortense was but a varm!_

=Vilp=, _n._ 1. A bad loser, an unsportsmanlike player. 2. A gloating victor, or one who is intoxicated by success.

=Vil´pous=, _a._ Unscrupulous, cheating in games.

The vilp is always explaining why he lost the game and usually blaming the fault upon someone else--he “usually plays a much better game” than the one you see. This time, it is only because he has the rheumatism, or didn’t get any sleep last night. (See _Slub_.)

The vilp plays to win--plays for the stakes or the prize. Women vilps have even been known to cheat at cards to gain a half-pound box of candy tied with yellow ribbon.

The vilp takes advantage of all his opponent’s slips, calls all fouls, but does not notice his own. He crows over his victim when he wins, and sulks when he loses. He bullies his opponent, and whines when he comes out last. (See _Igmoil_.)

There is no sex to the vilp; the women at the bridge and the men at the poker table are alike vilpous. (See _Gorm_.)

_There is no sport like Love, and he Or she who plays the game Must play to win; and so, maybe, The vilp is not to blame._

_“All’s fair in love and war,” they say, So women cheat and fight, And men compete the vilpous way. But does that make it right?_

=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_.)

Ginger snaps are voip; so are buns and doughnuts. Lastly came the reign of glorified voip in decorated pasteboard packages--breakfast foods of all degrees from birdseed up to dried peas.

New York has discovered the art of transforming any food into voip, by the simple expedient of making you eat it standing. (See _Uglet_.)

_At breakfast, when on voip I feed, Mechanically chewing, My listless palate does not heed, Or know what it is doing._

_I oft forget, when I am through, And wonder if I’ve fed! I have to feel my stomach to Be sure I’ve breakfasted!_

=Vorge=, _n._ 1. Voluntary suffering; unnecessary agony. 2. The lure of the uncertain.

=Vor´gid=, _a._ Morbidly fascinating; interested in horrors.

Peary was a vorgid man; twenty years of freezing half to death did not conquer his appetite. When he had found the North Pole, he didn’t know what to do with it. To him, life was just one vorge after another, pulling sledges, eating shoes and candles, sleeping in a bearskin bag. (See _Yab_.)

Whence comes the vogue of the vorge? As a child, you could not help putting your tongue to frozen iron, although you knew the skin would stick to it; the deed was vorgid. You put beans up your nose, and wheat up your stocking. You tattooed your arms; and that attractive sore compelled your touch. Vorgid was castor oil, and bitter medicines. All these things were horrid, but you did them and boasted of the vorge. It is vorgid to pull out your own tooth.

But how about him who escorts his homely cousin to a dance, and gets her partners? Is this less vorgid?

Oh, very vorgid is he who makes a speech, but vorgider far the groom at a fashionable wedding.

Are you vorgid? Do you enjoy doing palestric exercises in the Gym, or a cold bath on winter mornings? (See _Gloogo_.) Do you look forward, vorgidly, to the happy Xmastide?

Vorgid is women’s talk about their “operations.”

_Oh, vorgid ’tis to pant and strain And tug, the athlete thinks; And it is vorgid, in the rain, To golf o’er soggy links._

_But it is vorgider, by far, Than such palestric feat, To give that lady in the car Your Oh-so-longed-for seat!_

=Vo´ri-an-der=, _n._ 1. A woman who chases after men, instead of being chased. 2. A woman who telephones to men, or invites herself to dinners at his expense.

=Vo´ri-an-der=, _v._ 1. To act as above described; to inflict oneself upon an unwilling entertainer. Women’s overt competition for men.

To most men the voriander is anathema. He would prefer to ask the dullest girl in the world to dinner than to entertain the prettiest, who has invited herself.

Sly and patent are the tricks of the voriander. She may telephone you: “Have you got your car out of storage yet?” Or she may say, point-blank: “Say, isn’t there a dinner coming to me along about now?” (See _Eegot_.)

The voriander is sometimes pretty, but never attractive. Her attempts are usually dodged, but she still persists. “Confound it, I just _will_ get that man!” she says, and proceeds to voriander.

Never introduce a friend to a voriander. There are other kinder ways of getting rid of her. A cat can be kissed to death, or smothered in fresh butter; not the voriander. You have simply to leave town.

The voriander is “crazy” over you, and your purse. She writes you perfumed notes, she telephones you during business hours. (See _Drillig_.)

Many vorianders are over thirty years of age.