Related:

• ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.
  Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry met to consider it....
• Mythology, n.: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origi
  early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later....
• mythology, n: The body of a primitive people's beliefs, concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• SATAN, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes.
  Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven....
• LUNARIAN, n. An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits.
  The Lunarians have been described by Lucian, Locke and other observers, but without much agreement....
• GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.
  In his great work on _Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution_, the learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture -- the shrug -- among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head inside the shell....
• ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...