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The Cynic's Word Book

 

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SABBATH n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian version: "Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it wholly." To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the Fourth Commandment:
Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art
able,
And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape
the cable.

Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable
still supplies the
captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect
for the divine
ordinance.

SACERDOTALIST n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.
SACRAMENT n. A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of authority and significance are attached. Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity. Some of the smaller sects have no sacraments at all--for which mean economy they will indubitable be damned.
 
Old English 'word lottery' pick

Phoenix : n. Same as Phenix.; n. A genus of palms including the date tree.

 
The Cynic's Word Book by Ambrose Bierce published in 1906 and 1911.
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