Related:

• ZEUS, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog.
  Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names....
• ASS, n. A public singer with a good voice but no ear.
  In Virginia City, Nevada, he is called the Washoe Canary, in Dakota, the Senator, and everywhere the Donkey....
• 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...
• DOG, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
  This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant....
• 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....
• MONARCH, n. A person engaged in reigning. Formerly the monarch ruled, as the derivation of the word attests, and as many subjects have had occasion to learn.
  In Russia and the Orient the monarch has still a considerable influence in public affairs and in the disposition of the human head, but in western Europe political administration is mostly entrusted to his ministers, he being somewhat preoccupied with reflections relating to the status of his own head....
• PIG, n. An animal (_Porcus omnivorus_) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, {WYSIWYG}.
  Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to have easy initial learning curves, but also to lack depth...
• UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.
  Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse....
• OVATION, n. n ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation.
  A lesser "triumph." In modern English the word is improperly used to signify any loose and spontaneous expression of popular homage to the hero of the hour and place....