Related:

• Conservative, n: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911...
• ILLUMINATI, n. A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the sixteenth century
  o called because they were light weights -- _cunctationes illuminati_....
• SALAMANDER, n. Originally a reptile inhabiting fire
  later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile....
• HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands.
  Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution....
• 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...
• BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity.
  Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull....
• SOPHISTRY, n. The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished from one's own by superior insincerity and fooling.
  This method is that of the later Sophists, a Grecian sect of philosophers who began by teaching wisdom, prudence, science, art and, in brief, whatever men ought to know, but lost themselves in a maze of quibbles and a fog of words....
• DRAMATIST, n. One who adapts plays from the French. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary