Related:

• URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York.
  Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others....
• ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.
  Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry met to consider it....
• RADIUM, n. A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ that a scientist is a fool with.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear.
  Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every asylum for the insane....
• DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two enemies.
  Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance...
• RANK, n. Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.
  He held at court a rank so high That other noblemen asked why....
• YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.
  But yesterday I should have thought me blest To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak Of middle life and look adown the bleak And unfamiliar foreslope to the West, Where solemn shadows all the land invest And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest....
• UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.
  Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse....
• FORGETFULNESS, n. A gift of God bestowed upon doctors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...