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Ambrose Bierce's Devils Dictionary  (By irishgit (136) on 03/26/2005)

Written between 1890 and 1906, this was a satirical work by one of America's greatest and most enigmatic humorists and commentators. The tone is cynical, pointed and rather nasty throughout, but no less true for all that. What follows are some of my favorite definitions. A complete on-line version can be found at http://www.online-literature.com/bierce/devilsdictionary/ 5 = Great
 
 
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IMPUNITY, n. Wealth. (4)  5.00 (6)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne. (0)  5.00 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. (3)  4.80 (5)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one's voice. (3)  4.80 (5)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. (2)  4.75 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country. (1)  4.67 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. (2)  4.50 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
DELIBERATION, n. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on. (0)  4.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
PLEBISCITE, n. A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign. (0)  4.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
SCRIBBLER, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own. (0)  4.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
IMPIETY, n. Your irreverence toward my deity. (2)  4.25 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it. (2)  4.25 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another. (3)  4.20 (5)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
APPEAL, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw. (3)  4.00 (5)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. (2)  4.00 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
BRIDE, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. (1)  4.00 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket. (1)  4.00 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
INSURANCE, n. 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. (2)  4.00 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. (1)  4.00 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate. (1)  4.00 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity. (1)  4.00 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. (0)  4.00 (1)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
MAUSOLEUM, n. The final and funniest folly of the rich. (3)  3.80 (5)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave- driver. (2)  3.75 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party. (2)  3.75 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin. (1)  3.67 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. (1)  3.67 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ABSTAINER, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
COWARD, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy. (1)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to the fury of the customs. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy of opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
PLAGIARIZE, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer. (0)  3.50 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ALDERMAN, n. An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretence of open marauding. (1)  3.33 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury. (1)  3.33 (3)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it. (4)  3.00 (5)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
BAROMETER, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. (2)  3.00 (4)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside. (0)  3.00 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith. (0)  3.00 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity. (0)  3.00 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!
EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. (0)  3.00 (2)   Rate It!Get Rating Widget!