The Roycroft Dictionary (1914)

The Roycroft Dictionary

Elbert Hubbard's comic dictionary defines words through aphorisms, jokes, and pointed social commentary from the Roycroft circle. (Open Library)

Watches

Ingersoll watch

In the entry for "Time", Hubbard jokes that the metaphysical idea made the inexpensive Ingersoll watch a physical possibility. The Ingersoll is one of several comic definitions under Time, between abstract descriptions and jokes about speech and paid working hours. A familiar manufactured watch provides the concrete object in a metaphysical definition. There is no purchaser, wearer or scene of time-checking attached to this entry. (Project Gutenberg source text)

Source text: "TIME: ... A metaphysical entity that made the Ingersoll watch a physical possibility." (Project Gutenberg ebook 36566)