Related:

• MERCHANT, n. One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• Interpreter, n.: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• MAGNIFICENT, adj. Having a grandeur or splendor superior to that to which the spectator is accustomed, as the ears of an ass, to a rabbit, or the glory of a glowworm, to a maggot.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• 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....
• WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.
  The French are said to eat more bread _per capita_ of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable....
• J is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel -- than which nothing could be more absurd.
  Its original form, which has been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb, _jacere_, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape....
• INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another se
  an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act....