Related:

• FEAST, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
  In the Roman Catholic Church feasts are "movable" and "immovable," but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until they are full....
• INFERIAE,n. [Latin] Among the Greeks and Romans, sacrifices for propitation of the _Dii Manes_, or souls of the dead heroe
  for the pious ancients could not invent enough gods to satisfy their spiritual needs, and had to have a number of makeshift deities, or, as a sailor might say, jury-gods, which they made out of the most unpromising materials....
• DRUIDS, n. Priests and ministers of an ancient Celtic religion which did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice.
  Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith....
• 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....
• RIGHTEOUSNESS, n. A sturdy virtue that was once found among the Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque.
  Some feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into several European countries, but it appears to have been imperfectly expounded....
• AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• MUMMY, n. An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with an excellent pigment.
  He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals....
• Dejeuner, n. The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris.
  Variously pronounced. -- Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary...
• BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age
  ex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion....