Related:

• LEONINE, adj. Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox
  The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades....
• RIME, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad.
  The verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull....
• WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.
  The French are said to eat more bread _per capita_ of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable....
• MISS, n. The title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market.
  Miss, Missis (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense....
• OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words.
  A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer....
• EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order.
  The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other -- which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog....
• W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic.
  This advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like _epixoriambikos_....
• DIE, n. The singular of "dice." We seldom hear the word, because there is a prohibitory proverb, "Never say die.
  At long intervals, however, some one says: "The die is cast," which is not true, for it is cut....
• MINOR, adj. Less objectionable. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary