A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.
Ambrose BierceGenealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose BierceDamning, with bell, book and candle / Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal. / A rite permitting Satan to enslave him / Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.
Ambrose BiercePLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today . . . is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
Ambrose BierceCabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
Ambrose BierceA popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the "buffone", or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.
Ambrose BierceLOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem - a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.
Ambrose BiercePainting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose BierceRoad, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
Ambrose BierceDIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead - a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.
Ambrose BierceACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
Ambrose BiercePANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.
Ambrose BierceROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.
Ambrose BierceAlligator: The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.
Ambrose BierceINJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.
Ambrose BierceHAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
Ambrose BierceMIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
Ambrose BierceChristian - One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
Ambrose BierceIntroduction - a social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies.
Ambrose BierceInsurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
Ambrose BierceAs a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it.
Ambrose BiercePLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert it.
Ambrose BierceRICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.
Ambrose BierceSuddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.
Ambrose BierceEFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other-which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of the dog.
Ambrose BierceDISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
Ambrose BierceJESTER, n. An officer attached to the king's household to amuse the court by ludicrous actions and utterances . . . the king's own conduct and decrees [being] sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind.
Ambrose BierceWitticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.
Ambrose BierceLOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his election".
Ambrose BierceQUOTIENT, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another - usually about as many times as it can be got there.
Ambrose BierceRevelation: a famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
Ambrose BierceDAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper - the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort.
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