The Forty Foot from Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds."

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

“The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

“The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all.”

I learned ‘catamite’ from the first line of the Anthony Burgess novel “Earthly Powers”:

“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”