Related:

• URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York.
  Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others....
• END, n. The position farthest removed on either hand from the Interlocutor.
  The man was perishing apace Who played the tambourine...
• IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
  The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole....
• COENOBITE, n. A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedne
  and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples....
• ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• SCARABEE, n. The same as scarabaeus. He fell by his own hand Beneath the great oak tree.
  He'd traveled in a foreign land. He tried to make her understand The dance that's called the Saraband, But he called it Scarabee....
• DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
  Beside a lonely grave I stood -- With brambles 'twas encumbered...
• MUMMY, n. An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with an excellent pigment.
  He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals....