a politician who is both good and bad, which is worse than bad, because it messes up your classification scheme.

(v.) Conducting disputes over minor marginal issues, while overlooking more serious ones.
Derived from the scenario of people arguing over what color to paint the bicycle shed while the house is not finished.

(also: pedantry)
(also: law of triviality)
(also: peter's principle)

(also: grammar nazi)

🠕. That one.

To make answer, or disclose otherwise a consciousness of having inspired an interest in what Herbert Spencer calls "external coexistences," as Satan "squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve, responded to the touch of the angel's spear. To respond in damages is to contribute to the maintenance of the plaintiff's attorney and, incidentally, to the gratification of the plaintiff.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A liar in the caterpillar state.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a monstrous bird-beast that ruled the earth in a simpler, less hectic time before the hustle and bustle of urban living. also that which is antiquated or obsolete.

(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.

The best time to do everything you have planned for today.

A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. In order to effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner or the accused. If the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth. In our day the accused is usually a human being, or a socialist, but in mediæval times, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects were brought to trial. A beast that had taken human life, or practiced sorcery, was duly arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to death by the public executioner. Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards or vineyards were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and after testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued in contumaciam the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court, where they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized. In a street of Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the viceroy's legs, upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and punished. In Naples an ass was condemned to be burned at the stake, but the sentence appears not to have been executed. D'Addosio relates from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks, dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their conduct and morals. In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne, instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local magistracy. This was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were ordered to leave the places that they had infested within three days on pain of incurring "the malediction of God." In the voluminous records of this cause célèbre nothing is found to show whether the offenders braved the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable jurisdiction.
(also: judge)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

n. The smallest current coin.

---

"The man was in such deep distress,"
Said Tom, "that I could do no less
Than give him good advice." Said Jim:
"If less could have been done for him
I know you well enough, my son,
To know that's what you would have done."
—Jebel Jocordy


(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude — a privation appealing with a particular eloquence to all that is sympathetic in human nature. When young the orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place. It is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or scullery maid.

(also: money losing methods)
(eref: #125)

(n.) Shaping and then baking clay at a high temperature to create hard containers, and Link's mortal enemy.
(also: poetry)

n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

explosive i guess
(also: creation of the universe)

a sport involving men standing out on a floe of frozen ice and attempting to savagely beat each other with sticks. it's a bit like bruce wayne's training in batman begins, actually.

The quality of seeing a problem and seeing a solution while doing the most horrid things to get what you want

(n.) the grinning killer of the ocean depths, a squeaking sexual predator, a maritime molester, a blowholed bastard, a swirling nest of aquatic evil

considered one of nature's surprisingly intelligent animals

(eref: #101)

(phrase) The optimistic assessment delivered by educators, serving as a beacon of hope amidst the vast landscape of academic possibilities.

(also: student's parents)