Ambrose Bierce: from the Devil's Dictionary (K - Z)

kilt - a costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.

Krishna - a form under which the pretended god Vishnu became incarnate. A very likely story.

lap - one of the most important organs of the female system - an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's substantial welfare.

last - a shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.

Ah, punster, would my lot were cast,
Where the cobbler is unknown,
So that I might forget his last
And hear your own. (Gargo Repsky)

laziness - unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

learning - the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilised races, as distinguished from IGNORANCE, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See NONSENSE.

lecturer - one with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.

Leveller - the kind of political and social reformer who is more concerned to bring others down to his plane than to lift himself to theirs.

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

limb - the branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.

linen - "a kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp." - Calcraft the Hangman.

literally - figuratively, as: "The pond was literally full of fish"; "The ground was literally alive with snakes," etc.

Literature - the collective body of writing of all mankind, excepting Hubert Howe Bancroft and Adair Welcker. Theirs are Illiterature.

logic - the art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

loss - privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his election"; and of that eminent man, the poet Gilder, that he has "lost his mind". It is in the former and more legitimate sense, that the word is used in the famous epitaph:

Here Huntington's ashes long have lain
Whose loss is our own eternal gain,
For while he exercised all his powers
Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.

maiden - a young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, beaten out of the field by the canary - which, also, is more portable.

man - 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.

manna - 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, fertilising it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.

mausoleum - the final, and funniest, folly of the rich.

medal - a small metal disk given as a reward for virtues, attainments or services more or less authentic. It is related that Bismarck, who had been awarded a medal for gallantly rescuing a drowning person, that, being asked the meaning of the medal, he replied: "I save lives sometimes." And sometimes he didn't.

mind - a mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. From the Latin, mens, a fact unknown to that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor over the way had displayed the motto "Mens conscia recti," emblazoned his own shop front with the words "Men's, women's and children's conscia recti."

Mormon - a follower of Joseph Smith, who received from an angel a revelation inscribed on brass plates and afterward revised and enlarged by his successor in the prophethood. While still an inoffensive people the Mormons were bitterly persecuted, their prophet assassinated, their homes burned and themselves driven into the desert, where they prospered, practiced polygamy and themselves took and hand in the game of persecution.

namby-pamby - having the quality of magazine poetry. (See FLUMMERY.)

oblivion - the state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.

pantheism - the doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

phoenix - the classical prototype of the modern "small hot bird."

pilgrim - a traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.

pitiful - the state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.

plague - in ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharoah the Immune. The plague as we of today have the happiness to know it is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.

platitude - the fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-morality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jellyfish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram.

plaudit - the unit of currency in which the populace pays those who tickle and devour it.

pray - to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

precedent - in Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble altitude of a dirigible abitrament.

precocious - a four-year-old who elopes with his sister's doll.

Presbyterian - one who holds the conviction that the governing authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.

Presidency - the greased pig in the field game of American politics.

President - the leading figure in a small group of men of whom - and of whom only - it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

prime - enough to make a cat vomit. "Try our 5cent Havana filler" and see if it isn't.

rational - devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.

retribution - the natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of Law.

revenge - sending your girl's love letters to your rival after he has married her.

riot - a popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.

rostrum - in Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origins in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the Jews the observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian version: "Remember the seventh day to make they neighbour 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 recognised, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the Fourth Commandment:

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

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

sad - the efforts of musical debutantes:

"I'm saddest when I sing." Toodles

saint - a dead sinner revised and edited. "The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old Calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St Francis de Sales, said, on hearing him called a saint: 'I am delighted to hear that Monsieur de Sales is a saint. He was fond of saying indelicate things, and used to cheat at cards. In other respects he was a perfect gentleman, though a fool.'"

sardine - a small and very palatable fish, to which many unpalatable persons hesitate to compare themselves.

saw - a trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth:
"Half a loaf is better than a whole one if there is much else."
"What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it."
"He laughs best who last laughs least."
"Strike while your employer has a big contract."

tedium - ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source - the first words of the ancient Latin hymn Te Deum Laudamus. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.

telephone - an invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Trinity - in the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually their claims to adoration and propitiation. The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as part of the latter.

truth - an ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.

tzetze (or tsetse) fly - an African insect (glossina morsitans) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (mendax interminabilis).

weather - 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.

worship - Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.