Large Fierce Mammal

“‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

“‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.’

“‘Oh!’ said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.

“‘Ah, you should see ’em come round me of a Saturday night,’ Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side, ‘for to get their wages, you know.'” ~
Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6 — Humpty Dumpty; by Lewis Carroll

We live in an age of worthless and witless verbosity in which words mean whatever the speaker wishes them to, and in an indulgent audience of a thousand minds, heads will nod in concert with an exchange of knowing winks in solemn solidarity born of understanding a thousand individual meanings. None of them being that meant by the original speaker, nor even the original definition and usage of the word.

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment tells the story of a man learning that lesson the hard way. Whatever libation you choose to enjoy the next eight minutes and forty-five seconds with, I’d suggest something sour.