Related:

• MOUTH, n. In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• 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....
• TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail should be, and indubitably once was....
• HIBERNATE, v.i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion.
  There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals....
• ADMONITION, n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe.
  Friendly warning. Consigned by way of admonition, His soul forever to perdition....
• J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel -- than which nothing could be more absurd.
  Its original form, which has been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb, _jacere_, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape....
• EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.
  Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr....
• LOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not.
  Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his electio...
• POSTERITY, n. An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...