Related:

• DEGENERATE, adj. Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors.
  The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy...
• ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• FUNERAL, n. A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
  The savage dies -- they sacrifice a horse To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse....
• BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker.
  The hyena. "One night," a doctor said, "last fall, I and my comrades, four in all, When visiting a graveyard stood Within the shadow of a wall....
• BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think.
  That which distinguishes the man who is content to _be_ something from the man who wishes to _do_ something....
• APOSTATE, n. A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• 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....
• 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....
• POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...