Related:

• TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail should be, and indubitably once was....
• Male, n. A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex.
  The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man....
• NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• TIGHTS, n. An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.
  Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of ingenuity and sustained reflection....
• HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• AFRICAN, n. A nigger that votes our way. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal.
  They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic....
• WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.
  It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld, it roareth now....
• IMPROVIDENCE, n. Provision for the needs of to-day from the revenues of to-morrow.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...