Related:

• BAAL, n. An old deity formerly much worshiped under various names.
  As Baal he was popular with the Phoenicians; as Belus or Bel he had the honor to be served by the priest Berosus, who wrote the famous account of the Deluge...
• 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....
• LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
  We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed....
• Man, n.: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
  His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada....
• LAUREATE, adj. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's cou
  acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral....
• PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.
  "There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man, "To read the mind's construction in the face....
• Man, n.: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks e is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
  His hief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own pecies, which, however, multiplies with such insistent apidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada....
• AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...