Related:

• FORK, n. An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
  Formerly the knife was employed for this purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether reject, but use to assist in charging the knife....
• MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n. Government. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchi
  he part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat....
• DELUGE, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think.
  That which distinguishes the man who is content to _be_ something from the man who wishes to _do_ something....
• ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country.
  They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.
  In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to....
• VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• HEMP, n. A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...