BARRACK, n. A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of
which it is their business to deprive others.

BASILISK, n. The cockatrice. A sort of serpent hatched form the egg
of a cock. The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal.
Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator
saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment
for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved. Juno
afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave. Nothing
is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk,
but the cocks have stopped laying.

BASTINADO, n. The act of walking on wood without exertion.

BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship,
with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

The man who taketh a steam bath
He loseth all the skin he hath,
And, for he's boiled a brilliant red,
Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed,
Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling
With dirty vapors of the boiling.

Richard Gwow


BATTLE, n. A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot
that would not yield to the tongue.