Related:

• PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
  Formerly, painting and sculpture were combined in the same work...
• SCARIFICATION, n. A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious.
  The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement....
• 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....
• HAG, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like
  ometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc....
• RELIQUARY, n. A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth.
  Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable times....
• OLEAGINOUS, adj. Oily, smooth, sleek. Disraeli once described the manner of Bishop Wilberforce as "unctuous, oleaginous, saponaceous.
  And the good prelate was ever afterward known as Soapy Sam....
• 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....
• ALLIGATOR, n. The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.
  Herodotus says the Indus is, with one exception, the only river that produces crocodiles, but they appear to have gone West and grown up with the other rivers....
• FORCE, n. "Force is but might," the teacher said -- "That definition's just.
  The boy said naught but through instead, Remembering his pounded head...