Related:

• 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....
• RESPLENDENT, adj. Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an elemental unit of a parade.
  The Knights of Dominion were so resplendent in their velvet- and-gold that their masters would hardly have known them....
• HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spiri
  he place where the dead live. Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way....
• CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.
  In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably figured and symbolized...
• PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.
  In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow's tail...
• BACKBITE, v.t. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• DEGENERATE, adj. Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors.
  The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy...
• A man is known by the company that he organizes. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• EDIBLE, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...