Related:

• WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government.
  In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to....
• SCEPTER, n. A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority.
  It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents....
• 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...
• KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head," although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.
  A king, in times long, long gone by, Said to his lazy jeste...
• MARTYR, n. One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• INCOME, n. The natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial, arbitrary and fallaciou
  for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in whatsoever it consisteth -- coins, or land, or houses, or merchant- stuff, or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own subservience) as also of honors, titles, preferments and place, and all favor and acquaintance of persons of quality or ableness, are but to get money....
• ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage.
  A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though from this view of the matter there was once a considerably dissent among the learned, some holding that the posture of the body was immaterial....
• 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....