(n.) a big dumb animal occasionally handy for riding. extremely vulnerable to death by overfeeding, underfeeding, overworking, and minor leg injuries

Satire, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

a prank where you forcibly submerge someone's head into a shallow ceramic pool of rushing water for several seconds

Discipline, discipline; obedience, obedience; slavery and ignorance, pregnant with authority. A bourgeois body grotesquely fattened by a vulgar christian creature. A medley of fetishism, sectarianism and cowardice.

(abbreviated to Piano), n. An instrument thoughtfully provided by American husbands and fathers for their wives and daughters, in observance of Bulwer's dictum that "the best way to keep the dear creatures from playing the devil is to encourage them in playing the fool."
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) an academic discipline based around finding out what happened back in the past

and, the even more difficult bit, finding out what really happened in the past

A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of authority and significance are attached. Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity. Some of the smaller sects have no sacraments at all — for which mean economy they will indubitably be damned.


(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A race of ancient killers of mice and small birds. They merely tolerate humans thanks large to our ancestors viewing that as gods and feeding them. Mainly the feeding. They are ancient foes of the dogs.

a weapon utilized for a brief time in the 19th century which proves that something primarily intended to be cool usually winds up being very stupid indeed

named for les apaches, a hardened street gang which terrorized paris in la belle époque, this weapon consisted of a cheaply made pepperbox pistol with a brass knuckleduster in place of a proper grip, and a low-grade knife blade protruding from the barrel like a bayonet

naturally, the gun bit was about as accurate as a coked-up economist and the knife bit had only marginally more shear strength than play-doh, so in effect les apaches were famous for more or less ruining a perfectly functional set of brass knuckles.

An apparatus fitted over the nose and mouth of an inhabitant of London, whereby to filter the visible universe in its passage to the lungs.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a creature with the head of a deer, the feet of a rabbit, and a long ratlike tail, as well as a distinctive tummy-pouch. astoundingly enough, this creature really does exist, though predictably only in australia

The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's classification) of obtaining money by false pretences. It consists in "reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe." The imposture consists in not reading it aloud.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a peculiar life form that clings to the gutters of houses and is able to remain incredibly still.

also the best cartoon disney ever did

(n.) a large feline predator of africa (formerly of other places), whose men wear wigs while the women go crew-cut

A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots. Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and despot. Plato, doubtless, was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last.
"Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of Diversiones Sanctorum, "there hath been hardly more argument than that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the abdomen — in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly' — why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who nevertheless erred in denying it immortality. He had observed that its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing. This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The Appetite whose coarse clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which firmly though civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin, anchovies, pâtés de foie gras and all such Christian comestibles shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever, and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious faith, though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly revere) will assent to its dissemination."
(also: ginger)

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

Size. Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is large and nothing small. If everything in the universe were increased in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remained unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been. To an understanding familiar with the relativity of magnitude and distance the spaces and masses of the astronomer would be no more impressive than those of the microscopist. For anything we know to the contrary, the visible universe may be a small part of an atom, with its component ions, floating in the life-fluid (luminiferous ether) of some animal. Possibly the wee creatures peopling the corpuscles of our own blood are overcome with the proper emotion when contemplating the unthinkable distance from one of these to another.

a Jewish religious official who performs pediatric surgery

a death strip preventing pedestrians from entering a city without a car

(n.) 1) a trait which is inherited in a non-physical, non-genetic way, such as language. 2) the most insufferable goddam thing you can conceive of if it cloned itself, had sex with the clone and then ate the resulting babies for the +2 insufferability bonus.