Related:

• SALAMANDER, n. Originally a reptile inhabiting fire
  later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile....
• HOSTILITY, n. A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth's overpopulation.
  Hostility is classified as active and passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex....
• AIR, n. A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• MAGNITUDE, n. Size. Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is large and nothing small.
  If everything in the universe were increased in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been....
• ALTAR, n. The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods.
  The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female tool....
• BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity.
  Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull....
• EARTH smog | bricks AIR -- mud -- FIRE soda water | tequila WATER
• GNOME, n. In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral treasures.
  Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight....
• MANES, n. The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans.
  They were in a state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they had exhaled were buried and burned...