(n.) the african and south asian cousin of the european wolf, american coyote, and australian dingo, all constituting a family of wastrels with whom the domestic dog is not on butt-sniffing terms.

jackals had some sort of sacred significance in ancient egypt, where they were seen as guides to the afterlife for their habit of lurking around burial places (which jackals think of as "buffets")

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 fœtal 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. This tendency is most observable in the female of the species, in whom the ancestral sense is strong and persistent. The tailed men described by Lord Monboddo are now generally regarded as a product of an imagination unusually susceptible to influences generated in the golden age of our pithecan past.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
(also: time)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

the beautiful phenomenon where you get eaten by wolves. It's beautiful because it's normal.

(1831-1879) Scottish physicist. Maxwell made a significant contribution to understanding electromagnetism
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: james clerk maxwell quotes)

The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment. It is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not inconsistent with continuity of sin.

---

Desirous to avoid the pains of Hell,
You will repent and join the Church, Parnell?
How needless! — Nick will keep you off the coals
And add you to the woes of other souls.
—Jomater Abemy
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

Appointing your party to various offices for the good of your grandmother

(n.) a probably nonexistent cosmic force that supposedly determines whether chance-based outcomes are positive or negative. the central figure in a strange modern religion usually practiced in casinos and stock exchanges

The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.
(also: the devils dictionary)

a person who uses their great wealth to purchase virtuousness, which is contractually obligated to be mentioned titularly in any articles about scandals or atrocities.

something like this
(also: link isn't broken)

a surgical examination of your own body to determine how you died

Vexed by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obsession was once more common than it is now. Arasthus tells of a peasant who was occupied by a different devil for every day in the week, and on Sundays by two. They were frequently seen, always walking in his shadow, when he had one, but were finally driven away by the village notary, a holy man; but they took the peasant with them, for he vanished utterly. A devil thrown out of a woman by the Archbishop of Rheims ran through the streets, pursued by a hundred persons, until the open country was reached, where by a leap higher than a church spire he escaped into a bird. A chaplain in Cromwell's army exorcised a soldier's obsessing devil by throwing the soldier into the water, when the devil came to the surface. The soldier, unfortunately, did not.

(n.) the catch-all term for nationally-syndicated televised news programs; these can be thought of as analogous to cartoons, only viewed by old people (though the cartoons tend to leave the viewer more stable)

An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

---

When the world was young and Man was new,
And everything was pleasant,
Distinctions Nature never drew
'Mongst kings and priest and peasant.
We're not that way at present,
Save here in this Republic, where
We have that old régime,
For all are kings, however bare
Their backs, howe'er extreme
Their hunger. And, indeed, each has a voice
To accept the tyrant of his party's choice.

A citizen who would not vote,
And, therefore, was detested,
Was one day with a tarry coat
(With feathers backed and breasted)
By patriots invested.
"It is your duty," cried the crowd,
"Your ballot true to cast
For the man o' your choice." He humbly bowed,
And explained his wicked past:
"That's what I very gladly would have done,
Dear patriots, but he has never run."
—Apperton Doke

(also: the devils dictionary)

an engine component that increases the engine's impressiveness.

(482 – 565) Emperor of Eastern Roman Empire
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: justinian i quotes)

An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.
(also: the devils dictionary)

Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
(also: god)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)