It may be but a single extra step which isn’t there and the agowilt playfully paralyzes your heart. So a sudden jerk of the elevator, the startling stopping of the train, the automobile skidding, the roller-coaster looping the loop—bring agowilts.
Vicariously you suffer as well, when the trapeze performers swing in dizzying circles or do the “death dive.”
“Good heavens! I left my bag in the train!”—an agowilt quite as painful. (See Nulkin.)
Why does your friend, reckless Robert, pause on the edge of the cliff? Merely to delight you with an agowilt.
When I taught Fanny, the flirt, to swim, and she found herself in water over her head, why did she scream and throw her arms about my neck? Was it truly an agowilt? (See Varm.)
’Twas not when Johnnie got the gun
And pointed it at Jean;
Nor when he played, in childish fun
With father’s razor keen—
She did not agowilt until
Her little brother said:
“I just saw sister kissing Bill!”
She agowilted dead.
Al´i-bosh, n. A glaringly obvious falsehood; something not meant to be actually believed; a picturesque overstatement.
A circus poster is an alibosh; so is a seed catalogue, a woman’s age and an actress’s salary. (See Blurb.)
There are verbal aliboshes too numerous to mention: “I have had such a charming time!” and “No, I don’t think you’re a bit too fat, you are just nice and plump.” (See Gubble and Wumgush.)