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....
• 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....
• COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• ELECTRICITY, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
  It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to strike Dr....
• ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
  A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous....
• DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
  -- 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....
• EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
  We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed....