Related:

• CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.
  "There is no art," says Shakespeare, foolish man, "To read the mind's construction in the face....
• SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar "tumble-bug.
  It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity....
• COMMENDATION, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles, but do not equal, our own.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• AFRICAN, n. A nigger that votes our way. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• JOSS-STICKS, n. Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
  Excepting in its foetal state, Man is without a tail, a privation of which he attests an hereditary and uneasy consciousness by the coat-skirt of the male and the train of the female, and by a marked tendency to ornament that part of his attire where the tail should be, and indubitably once was....