Related:

• REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend.
  In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian....
• LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
  The man who taketh a steam bath He loseth all the skin he hath, And, for he's boiled a brilliant red, Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed, Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling With dirty vapors of the boiling....
• APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism.
• PLEASURE, n. The least hateful form of dejection. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• Liver: A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with.
  -- Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary...
• ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...