BAAL, p.n.  The name by which God was adored by the Phoenicians and Satan reviled by their neighbors.

BACK, n.  The aspect of the spine and the face of the spineless.

BACKBITE, v.t.  To exaggerate the pettiness and indiscretion of another.

BACKSLIDE, v.i.  To take up in January resolutions written down in December.

BAD, adj.  Under 30.

Let the sleigh bells ring, children listen!

The snow may fall and ice may glisten

But unless you little scamps repent,

Santa doesn't owe you one red cent.

If Hygeia brought presents, your slovenly smell

Would drive her back up the chimney and into the well.

If Saint Peter were to judge you now by your acts,

He'd unharness the reindeer and strap you to the rack

And Erato, once hearing those lame songs you play

Would give your iPod to an old man and just drive away.

But it's Santa brings Christmas, and he who keeps score.

He can't doubt that you're criminals, each to the core.

Through cold winter storm, yet, should he ride

To bring some glad tidings to the rotten inside?

Lucky then, for you, on the night that he sleds,

Through the din of your whining, he can't count in his head.

BAIT, v.t.  To divorce will from judgement.  The intransitive form is SHOP.

BALDERDASH, n.  The Senate’s proclamation of a national language.

BALLOON, n.  A decoy daddy.

BALLOT, n.  The weapon wielded by a patriot against a compatriot.

BANDIT, n.  The chief administrator of a transient bureaucracy.

BANE, n.  Balm.

BANSHEE, n. A pundit whose party holds power.

BANQUET, n.  A congratulatory feast celebrating a recent or expected victory, accomplishment or ascent.  Notable honorees include Jesus Christ and Marie Antoinette.

BANQUO, n.  Shakespeare’s personification of Ronald Reagan.

BARBECUE, v.  A funeral banquet at which the virtues of a fallen hog are celebrated by comrades.

BARK, n.  The soaring rhetoric of Churchill in the ears of his black dog.

BARTER, n.   A medium for the exchange of poverty.

BASEBALL, n.  The national pastime of an over-scheduled people.

BASSINET, n.  A cradle in which a new mother and father may rest their resentment.

BATTLE, n.  An ordeal offering heroes proof and victory to fools.

BAYONET, n.  An industrial age emoticon.

BEAR, n.  The bristly mountain eel.  An undocumented seasonal worker eligible to cradle children in gratitude for not speaking Spanish.

BEATITUDE, n.  A blessing on the wanting.

I envy not on any morn

The celebrants on papered grasses,

Extending toasts and raising glasses

While holding in their scorn.

I would not imitate, though able,

Those who laugh in ennui,

And gossip over sweetened tea

As if others' trysts set up the table.

Nor would I count those two as blest,

Who as one live out their days

Hand in hand and eyes in glaze,

The cloth of life, that in which they're dressed.

For the truth of living and its price

Is that no life can be lived fully

With heart so yoked and mind so gullied

One turns to poets for advice.

'Tis better to have lived alone

 Than to waste each hour twice.

-Elijah Serf Jenkins

BED, n.  The ferry that carries passion to the mill.

BEDLAM, n.  A Lutheran Church with an overdue pastor.

BEHAVIOR, n.  Actions regulated to separate the enlightened modern from brutes, savages, friends and family.

BELLY, n.  The reservoir of accomplishment.

BENEFACTOR, n.  A former beneficiary and future target.

BENEVOLENCE, n.  To re-elect a demon.

BETRAYAL, n.  Loyalty to another cause.

BEGGAR, n.  A captain of industry at home or an oracle anywhere.

BIBLE, n.  A foundation of faith supporting the houses of heresy.

BIBLICAL, adj.  Of global truth, universal application and infinite misrepresentation.

BIBLIOPHILE, n.  A collector of dust collectors.

BICAMERAL, adj.  Monotonous.

BICEPHALOUS, adj. Twice bribed.

BICYCLE, n.  A mechanical device designed to transport the body, inspire the spirit and and raise the hackles.

BID, v.i..  To petition the government.

BID, n.  A challenge in cards, a promise at auction or a golfing outing in politics.

BIDE, v.i. To hesitate aspirationally.

BIER, n. An honorable hustings.  

BIERCE, AMBROSE GWINETT A satirist sufficient for his era perhaps not for ours.

BIFURCATE, v.t. To prepare two lies.

BIG, adj. Estimated.

BIGAMY, n.  An arrangement of housekeeping in which resentment and disappointment can be kept in separate ledgers.

BIGOT, n.  Someone who fails to recognize the inferiority of his own kind as well.

BIRTH, n.  The end of life as we know it, the final entitlement of the human life cycle.  "Last Rights."

BIOGRAPHY, n.  A reincarnation into a kinder, more deferential world.

BLUBBER, n.  Nature’s instrument for teaching man art.

BLUSHING, adj.  Under the visible influence of truth or plague.  Unelectable.  Unpromotable.  Incurable.

BODY POLITIC, n.  A marbled Argus covered in mouths.

BOER WAR, n. A war undertaken to free South Africa from the tyranny of foreign farmers and return it to the benevolence of British bankers.

BOG, n.  A fine fen.

BOGUS, adj.  Tested by a skeptic.

BOHEMIA, n.  An ancient land of many Z’s.

BOHEMIAN, n.  A San Franciscan.

BOIL, n.  The chancre of the just and pious.

BOIL, v.i.  To sympathize with hot water.

BOIL, v.t.  To embile.

BOISTEROUS, adj.  Loud and of like mind.

BOLD-FACED, adj.  Two-faced with a single mouth and forked-tongue.

BOMB, n.  An argument for liberty, anarchy and security, the tri-coleur of an honest France.

BON VIVANT, n.  An epicure with a nuanced palate for pretense.

BOOK LEARNING, n.  The method of education that teaches the art of fraud and the science of forgery.

BOOSTER, n.  The rah material of an academic assembly.

BORDELLO, n.  A house of legates with a meritocratic bent.

BORDER, n.  The boundary dividing domestic mythology from foreign demography.  Where the fog thins and statistics become valid.

BOTANY, n.  The scientific inquiry into the taxonomy, morphology, frequency, distribution, proliferation and cytostructure of foolish metaphors.

Flowers are striking in shade, shape and scent

The redwood awes all those who see.

But most of Earth's plantlife, ninety percent

Is composed of unremarkable algae.

Love is a rose, a wood with no rangers

And the vine of human obsession;

While indifferent nods that pass between strangers

Make up most of this planet's affection.

-J. Langston Antimony, Ph.D.

BOUNDARY, n.  The length and breadth of national interest.

BRAHMA, p.n.  A deity worshipped in India, a nation of a billion souls adhering to countless religions in dozens of languages who have nonetheless become one people through a shared history of colonization. Esp. of Canada, the Caribbean and British Isles and the Internet.

BRIBE, n.  The interruption by corruption of the fermentation of administration.

BRIDE, n.  A lure admirably suited for catching fishermen.

BRILLIANT, adj.  Autobiographical.

BROADCAST, v.i.  To mumble to oneself en masse.

BRUTE, n.  An avaricious and willful cuss despised in proportion to their pleasure.  The term is generally applied to males typically the one with the remote.

BUCKEYE, n.  A nut of Ohio, germ of midwestern culture.

BUFFOONERY, n.  The gratification of our supposed friends.