Related:

• Senate, n.: A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
  -- Ambrose Bierce...
• HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it.
  In the United States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House...
• HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry.
  In some of the American States his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity have recently been ordered -- the first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging Jerseymen....
• CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul.
  A Tartar Emetic. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• MONSIGNOR, n. A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...