Related:

• FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests.
  It was nocturnal in its habits, and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children....
• PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• TIGHTS, n. An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity.
  Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of ingenuity and sustained reflection....
• SALAMANDER, n. Originally a reptile inhabiting fire
  later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile....
• 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....
• SYLPH, n. An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.
  Sylphs were allied to gnomes, nymphs and salamanders, which dwelt, respectively, in earth, water and fire, all now insalubrious....
• APOSTATE, n. A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• HOURI, n. A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good Mussulma
  whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul....
• HIBERNATE, v.i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion.
  There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals....