PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.

VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.

GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.

SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.

NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.