Chevron Rib

CAABA, n.  A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham,and preserved at Mecca.  The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.

Linked Ribs

ARCHBISHOP, n.  An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.

If I were a jolly archbishop,

On Fridays I'd eat all the fish up--

Salmon and flounders and smelts;

On other days everything else.

Jodo Rem.

Chain Stitch Rib

APRIL FOOL, n.  The March fool with another month added to his folly.

Basket Weave Rib

ADMIRAL, n.  That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the figure-head does the thinking.

April 25th 2013 Full Moon in Scorpio 12:57pm Partial Lunar Eclipse 1:08pm

Photo courtesy of Stacey M Peter

LUNARIAN, n.  An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits.  The Lunarians have be described by Lucian, Locke and other observers, but without much agreement.  For example, Bragellos avers their anatomical identity with Man, but Professor Newcomb says they are more like the hill tribes of Vermont.

Faggoted Rib

PAST, n.    That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance.  A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future.  These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike.  The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.  The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song.  In the one crouches Memore, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease.  Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow.  They are one--the knowledge and the dream.

Square Rib

PASSPORT, n.  A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special reprobation and outrage.

Ripple Rib

GENTEEL, adj.   Refined, after the fashion of a gent.

Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:

A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.

Heed not the definitions your "Unabridged" presents,

For dictionary makers are generally gents.

G. J.

Granite Rib

GENEALOGY, n.  An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Bluebell Rib

IMPOSITION, n.   The act of blessing or consecration by the laying on of hands--a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.

"Lo! by the laying on of hands,"

Say parson, priest and dervise,

"We consecrate your cast and lands

To ecclesiastic service.

No doubt you'll swear till all is blue

At such an imposition. Do."

Pollo Doncas.

Wavy Eyelet Rib

TOMB, n.    The House of Indifference.  Tombs are now by common consent invested with a certain sanctity, but when they have been long tenanted it is considered no sin to break them open and rifle them, the famous Egyptologist, Dr. Huggyns, explaining that a tomb may be innocently "glened" as soon as its occupant is done "smellynge," the soul being then all exhaled.  This reasonable view is now generally accepted by archaeologists, whereby the noble science of Curiosity has been greatly dignified.

Fir Cone

PRECEDENT, n.    In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases.  As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of his desire.  Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.

Staggered Eyelets

RIMER, n.  A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,

The sound surceases and the sense expires.

Then the domestic dog, to east and west,

Expounds the passions burning in his breast.

The rising moon o'er that enchanted land

Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

Mowbray Myles.

Moss-Stitch Squares

EAVESDROP, v.i.   Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.

A lady with one of her ears applied

To an open keyhole heard, inside,

Two female gossips in converse free--

The subject engaging them was she.

"I think," said one, "and my husband thinks

That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"

As soon as no more of it she could hear

The lady, indignant, removed her ear.

"I will not stay," she said, with a pout,

"To hear my character lied about!"

Gopete Sherany.

Garter and Slip Stitch

INTENTION, n.   The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

Lacey Checks

INJUSTICE, n.  A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselfves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.

Lattice Lace

Moral Insanity: insanity, aberration, craziness, delirium dementia, derangement, frenzy, lunacy, madness, mania.  Of these terms insanity, although not technically used in medicine and psychiatry, is the most general, including in its loose sense almost any mental disorder; in legal use it is applied to those forms which deprive the afflicted person of capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, manage his personal affairs and discharge his social obligations.  Craziness is a vague, popular term for any sort of disordered mental action, or for conduct suggesting it.  Lunacy originally denoted intermittent insanity, supposed to be dependent o the changes of the moon. Madness is the old popular term for insanity in its widest sense, but with suggestion of excitement akin to mania.  Lunacy denotes what is insanely foolish, madness what is insanely desperate.  Derangement is a common euphemism for insanity.  Delirium is always temporary, and is specifically a mental disturbance caused by or associated with disease, as in acute fevers.  Dementia is a general weakening of the mental powers; the word is especially used in psychiatry for mental disorders caused by organic brain diseased. Aberration is eccentricity of mental action due to an abnormal state of the perceptive faculties, and is manifested by error in perceptions and rambling thought.  Mania is a mental disorder implying violence and excitability, often with fixation upon some definite object, emotion, or situation and accompanied by melancholy.  Frenzy is a sudden outburst of emotion leading to excesses of behavior and action. (See delusion; idiocy)

Criminal: abominable, culpable, felonious, flagitious, guilty, illegal, immoral, iniquitous, nefarious, sinful, unlawful, vicious, vile, wicked, wrong;  Every criminal act is illegal or unlawful, but illegal or unlawful acts may not be criminal.  Offenses against public law are criminal; offenses against private rights are merely illegal or unlawful.  As a general rule, all acts punishable by fine or imprisonment or both are criminal in ivew of the law.  It is illegal for a man to trespass on another's land, but it is not criminal; the trespasser is liable to a civil suit for damages, but not to indictment, fine, or imprisonment.  A felonious act is a criminal act of an aggravated kind, which is punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary or by death.  A flagitious crime is one that brings public odium.  Vicious refers to the indulgence of evil appetites, habits, or passions; vicious acts are not necessarily criminal, or even illegal; we speak of a vicious horse.  That which is iniquitous, i.e., contrary to equity, may sometimes be done under the forms of law.  Ingratitude is sinful, hypocrisy is wicked, but neither is punishable  by human law; hence, neither is criminal or illegal.  (Compare sin)

Synonyms Antonyms & Prepositions J. C. Fernald

Garter Drop Stitch

JUSTICE, n.  A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

Pilar Stitch

KING, n.  A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head" although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of,

A king, in times long, long gone by,

Said to his lazy jester;

"If I were you and you were I

My moments merrily would fly--

No care nor grief to pester."

"The reason, Sire, that you would thrive,"

The fool said--"if you'll hear it--

Is that of all the fools alive

Who owne you for their sovereign, I've

The most forgiving spirit."

Oogem Bem.

Slip-Stitch Rib

LAP, n.  One of the most important organs of the female system--an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males.  The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's substantial welfare.

Diagonal Knot Stitch

LIBERTY, n.  One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

The rising People, hot and out of breath,

Roared round the palace: "Liberty or death!"

"If death will do," the King said, "let me reign;

You'll have, I'm sure, no reason to complain."

Martha Braymance.

Cable Fabric

LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.

Twisted Basket Weave

LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.

Lichen Twist

LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

Stockinette Triangles

At a potato Digging

I

A mechanical digger wrecks the drill,

Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould.

Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill

Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold.

Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch

A higgledy line from hedge to headland;

Some pairs keep breaking raged ranks to fetch

A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand

Tall for a moment but soon stumble back

to fish a new load from the crumbled surf.

Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black

Mother. Processional stooping through the turf

Recurs mindleesly as autumn. Centuries

Of fear and homage to the famine god

Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees,

Make a seasonal altar of the sod.

II

Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered

like inflated pebbles. Native to the black hutch of clay

where the halved seed shot and clotted

these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem 

the petrified hearts of drills.

Split

by the spade, they show white as cream.

Good smells exude from crumbled earth.

The rough bake of humus erupts

knots of potatoes (a clean birth)

whose solid feel, whose wet inside

promises tast of ground and root.

To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed.

III

Live skulls, blind-eyed balanced on

wild higgledy skeletons

scoured the land in 'forty-five,

wolfed the blighted root and died.

The new potato, sound as stone,

putrefied when it had lain

three days in the long clay pit.

Millions rotted along with it.

Mouths tightened in , eyes died hard,

faces chilled to a plucked bird.

In a million wicher huts

beaks of famine snipped at guts.

A people hungering from birth,

grubbing, like plants, in the bitch earth,

were grafted with a great sorrow.

Hope rotted like a marrow.

Stinking potatoes fouled the land, 

pits turned puts into filthy mounds:

and where potato diggers are

you still smell the running sore.

IV

Under a gay flotilla of gulls

The rhythm deadens, the workers stop.

Brown bread and tea in bright canfuls

Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop

Down in the ditch and take their fill,

Thankfully breaking timeless fasts;

Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill

Libation of cold tea, scatter crusts.

Seamus Heaney 

1965-1975

Twisted Check Pattern

LAWYER, n.  One skilled in circumvention of the law.

Alternating Triangles

LAWFUL, adj.  Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.

Bramble Stitch

LAW, n.

Once Law was sitting on the bench,

And Mercy knelt a-weeping.

"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!

Nor come before me creeping.

Upon your knees if you apprear,

'Tis plain you have no standing here."

Then Justice came. His Honor cried:

"Your status?--devil seize you!"

"Amica curiae," she replied--

"Friend of the court, so please you."

"Begone!" he shouted--"there's the door--

I never saw your face before!"

 G. J.