Related:

• 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....
• Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• PHYSICIAN, n. One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• TRUCE, n. Friendship. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York.
  Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others....
• ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude -- a privation appealing with a particular eloquence to all that is sympathetic in human nature.
  When young the orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place....