(n.) the ability to compel one to obey commands

the general food chain of authority begins with god, standing above popes, emperors, royalty and presidents, who in turn stand above important officials, who are above unimportant officials, and thence scary looking men in suits, scary looking men in military uniform, mayors, bureaucrats, police officers, school principals, and, at the bottom tier, landlords, employers, and the clergy.

and then there's you maggots

(n.) speaking back and forth to other people.

Despite the frustratingly complex rules involved, it's not usually considered a sport, possibly because nobody bothers remembering how to score.

according to encyclopedia galactica

institutionalized social system in which men dominate over others.

a dance where you are forcibly frolicked around a circle

Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy.
The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most intelligent animal.

the purported secretive cabal consisting of key influential individuals in the many halls of power, and which engineers globally insidious undertakings of all descriptions, including the activities of satanic cults, the cia, the military, ancient egyptians, atlantis, alien invaders, the entertainment industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the arms industry, the confectionery industry, unhinged lone wolf assassins, the knights templar, your mom, french revolutionaries, freemasons, and underappreciated webcartoonists of the 2010s who just sort of stopped updating with no warning one day.

... but not coofl. definitely not coofl.

Thirty million generations of philosophers have debated the definition of intelligence. The most popular definition appears in the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation android manuals:
"Intelligence is the ability to reconcile totally contradictory situations without going completely bonkers. For example, having a stomach ache and not having a stomach ache at the same time, holding a hole without the doughnut, having good luck and bad luck simultaneously, or seeing a real estate agent waive his fee."
(also: philosophy)
(also: mice)

holiday on June 6th, on which every good Christian does whatever it is you do to celebrate Saint Norbert of Xanten, archbishop of Magdeburg.

A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.
(also: creation of the universe)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.

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The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.
—Judibras

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

my book
(author: douglas adams)

(n.) if a shelf does not hold books or spices, is it a real shelf?

the belief in an all-powerful being who pervades the universe and has zero effect on it.

Pittbull is an American music artist. It is widely believed that he is enjoyed but not a very good one.

For we're do the sails of life lead?
Rudderless in direction.
The captain knows
Yet lest we see
Blow winds to far off destinations.

- Pittbull (song: Timber feat. Ke$ha)

a computer program that pretends to be a different genre of pornography

A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
(also: humor)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans. They were in a state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they had exhaled were buried and burned; and they seem not to have been particularly happy afterward.
(also: the devils dictionary)

Dumb and illiterate.
(also: truth)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a particle even smaller than an atom, which apparently read "atoms cannot be subdivided into smaller particles" somewhere and decided "hell with you, I do what I want"

come in six refreshing flavors: up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm.

An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoölogists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld, it roareth now. The species is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from Greenland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand. The popular name (wolf-man) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind. The woman is lithe and graceful in its movements, especially the American variety (felis pugnans), is omnivorous and can be taught not to talk.
—Balthasar Pober
(also: man)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)