n. An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (Thaddeus Polandensis) or Polliwig — Maria pseudo-hirsuta. For an exhaustive description and history of the Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Porter, Thaddeus of Warsaw.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

gianello della torre (1500 – 1585) was a renaissance-era inventor who made his home in spain (where his name is best known) and could have been as famous as his contemporary leonardo da vinci, if people's brains were capable of storing the names of more than one renaissance-era inventor

does not have a ninja turtle named after him

(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)

(n.) buffoonery or clowning-around

sucks to be tom, i guess

(n.) a really big fat rock that floats around in space, but is stuck orbiting around another bigger and fatter rock.

(also: planet)

Troll community can be defined as a hardest group for marketing of your product. If you develop a product that targeting Troll community you should know that they are gonna target you too.
(also: resign)
(also: leaving the planet)

The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up of official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

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Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be —
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote —
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
—Halcyon Jones

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility. His principal qualification is a degree of plausible inveracity next below that of an ambassador.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(also: tragedy)

The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only. This important distinction between ubiquity and omnipresence was not clear to the mediæval Church and there was much bloodshed about it. Certain Lutherans, who affirmed the presence everywhere of Christ's body, were known as Ubiquitarians. For this error they were doubtless damned, for Christ's body is present only in the eucharist, though that sacrament may be performed in more than one place simultaneously. In recent times ubiquity has not always been understood — not even by Sir Boyle Roche, for example, who held that a man cannot be in two places at once unless he is a bird.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) big swimming sacks of flammable oil that make mooing/whimpering noises and breach for the amusement of tourists

saving them from imminent extinction is a major goal of environmentalists, and hunting them to extinction is a major goal of crusty old men with peg-legs, norwegians and japanese people

(n.) a larger arthropod and cousin of the spider. Not as widely feared, despite the fact that it comes with far more built in weapons

A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.

Originally a reptile inhabiting fire; later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbé Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a place that promises free jam tomorrow, provided prospective visitors have forgone jam today; reaching such a place is the central tenet of most major religions

(also: religion)

A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian version: "Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it wholly." To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the Fourth Commandment:

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Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

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Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine ordinance.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) the desired state of many a soft soul out there.
genuine, silent, powerful.
decidedly not a Hollywood strong-female-character (TM) move, and not captured by the quirky-dream-girl (TM) either.
ambient downtempo friendly/ compatible.

another one of france's contributions to society (pastry). france is just on a roll, y'all.

n. A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) that which stays one's hand from doing harm to the pathetic

ex. "I'm out of bullets. What a pity."