Related:

• UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.
  This important distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the mediaeval Church and there was much bloodshed about it....
• MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women.
  As in Rome Christians were thrown to the lions, so centuries earlier in Otumwee, the most ancient and famous city of the world, female heretics were thrown to the mice....
• WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• 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_....
• POLYGAMY, n. A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which has but one.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme.
  This doctrine should not be confused with that of foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does not affirm their occurrence, that being only an implication from other doctrines by which this is entailed....
• PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment.
  He is sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn....
• SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar "tumble-bug.
  It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity....