Related:

• TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder.
  His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder....
• Technicality, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused a neighbor of murder.
  His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of his head fell on one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder....
• PIETY, n. Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.
  The pig is taught by sermons and epistles To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles....
• PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• POSTERITY, n. An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs, and believes it civilization.
  -- Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary...
• HERS, pron. His. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...