Related:

• PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and the mice.
  Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr....
• The distinction between Freedom and Liberty is not accurately know
  naturalists have been unable to find a living specimen of either....
• UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.
  Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse....
• UNIX conspiracy: [ITS] n. According to a conspiracy theory long popular among {{ITS}} and {{TOPS-20}} fa
  UNIX's growth is the result of a plot, hatched during the 1970s at Bell Labs, whose intent was to hobble AT&T's competitors by making them dependent upon a system whose future evolution was to be under AT&T's control....
• SYLPH, n. An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.
  Sylphs were allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively, in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious....
• MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness.
  When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants....
• CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiatio
  and who followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse....