Related:

• INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another se
  an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act....
• CABBAGE, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
  The cabbage is so called from Cabagius, a prince who on ascending the throne issued a decree appointing a High Council of Empire consisting of the members of his predecessor's Ministry and the cabbages in the royal garden....
• HOSTILITY, n. A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth's overpopulation.
  Hostility is classified as active and passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex....
• LAUREATE, adj. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's cou
  acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral....
• WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• 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....
• 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....
• PLEBISCITE, n. A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• PREROGATIVE, n. A sovereign's right to do wrong. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary