Grandma's Dictionary

My mother recently received copies of some of her mother's writing.

Most of it is fiction, written in long hand, and I plan to type it up to share with the family (barring the occasional unreadable word), but a few pieces were typed, and one was the beginning of a family dictionary.

I thought it was pretty amusing, and I hope we find the rest of it some day! But in the meantime, here are letters A through D.

A

Adult: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and started growing in the middle.

Advice: One thing that is more blessed to give than receive.

Alas: Early Victorian for Oh, Hell!

B

Babies: Little rivets in the bonds of matrimony.

Bargain sale: An event at which a woman ruins one dress while she buys another.

Bostonian: An American, broadly speaking.

Bridge: A card game in which a good deal depends upon a good deal.

Budget: A plan for worrying before you spend instead of afterward.

C

Christian fortitude: Being able to bear the sufferings of other folks with great resignation.

Conceit: The rooster that thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

Congressman: A man who votes for all appropriations and against all taxes.

Conservative: A man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

Contented man: A man who enjoys the scenery along the detour.

Convinced talker: A man who can explain to his high-school-aged son wherein algebra is going to be any use to him after he's out of school.

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his feet.

Cynic: One who says, "You can't believe everything you hear, but you can repeat it.

D

Darling: The popular form of address used in speaking to a person of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment recall.

Debt: The only thing that doesn't grow smaller when it's contracted.

Desire: There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

I don't know if my grandmother wrote these words, or gathered them from sayings in the family, or a mixture of both. I don't even know if they are original to the family, or if they were common folk aphorisms. But there are some real zingers in there!