- A
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- ACADEME, n.
An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. -- Ambrose Bierce
- ACADEMY, n.
[from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught. -- Ambrose Bierce
- ACTING, n:
The most minor of gifts and not a very high class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four. -- Katherine Hepburn
- ADMIRATION, n:
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. -- Ambrose Bierce
- ADVERTISING, n.,
The art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need. -- Will Rogers
- AMBASSADOR, n:
An honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country. -- Henry Wotton
- ARCHITECTURE, n:
The art of how to waste space. -- Philip Johnson
- ATHIEST, n:
A man who has no invisible means of support. -- John Buchan
- B
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- BASKETBALL, n:
The second most exciting indoor sport. -- Dick Vertlieb
- BATTLE, n:
A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that will not yield to the tongue. -- Ambrose Bierce
- BIRTH, n:
The first and dirtiest of all disasters. -- Ambrose Bierce
- BOUNDARY, n:
In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another. -- Ambrose Bierce
- BORE, n:
A person who deprives you with solitude without providing company. -- Gian Vincenza Cravina
- BOSS, n:
Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early. -- Anon.
- BOY, n:
A noise with dirt on it. -- Not Your Average Dictionary
- BUDGET, n:
(1)An orderly system for living beyond your means. -- Anon.
- BUDGET, n:
(2)An attempt to live below your yearnings. -- Anon.
- BUG, n:
An aspect of a computer program which exists because the programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he wrote the program. -- Not Your Average Dictionary
- BUGS, pl. n:
Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls. -- Anon.
- BUREAUCRAT, n:
(1) A person who cuts red tape sideways. -- J. McCabe
- BUREAUCRAT, n:
(2) A politician who has tenure. -- Anon.
- BUREAUCRACY, n:
A giant mechanism operated by pygmies. -- Honore de Balzac.
- BUSINESS, n:
The art of extracting money from another man's pocket without resorting to violence. -- Max Amsterdam
- C
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- CABBAGE, n:
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. -- Ambrose Bierce
- CALORIES, n:
Tiny creatures that live in your closet and shrink your clothes every night. -- Anon
- CAT, n:
(1) A soft, indestructible automation provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in domestic circles. -- Ambrose Bierce
- CAT, n:
(2) A lapwarmer with a built-in buzzer. -- Anon.
- CAPITOL, n:
The seat of misgovernment. -- Ambrose Bierce
- CELEBRITY, n:
(1) One who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know. -- H.L. Mencken
- CELEBRITY, n:
(2) A person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being reognized. -- Fred Allen
- CENSOR, n:
A man who knows more than he thinks you ought to. -- Granville Hicks
- CHEF, n:
Any cook who swears in French. -- Anon.
- CHEMICALS, n:
Noxious substances from which modern foods are made. -- Anon.
- CHRISTIAN, n:
(1) One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbors. -- Ambrose Bierce
- CHRISTIAN, n:
(2) A man who feels repentance on a Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to do on Monday. -- Ambrose Bierce
- CLASSIC, adj:
In literature, a book that everybody wants to have read but nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain
- COACH, n:
A person who is willing to lay down your life for the good of his team. -- Anon.
- COACH, n:
A person who is willing to lay down your life for the good of his team. -- Anon.
- COMMAND, n:
In computer science, a statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control. -- Anon.
- COMMERCE, n:
A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E. -- Ambrose Bierce
- COMMITTEE, n:
(1)A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary. -- Richard Long Harkness
- COMMITTEE, n:
(2) An entity that keeps minutes and loses hours. -- Anon.
- COMMON SENSE, n:
The collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen. -- Albert Einstein
- COMPROMISE, n:
(1)An agreement whereby both parties get what neither of them wanted. -- Anon.
- COMPROMISE, n:
(2)The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece. -- Anon.
- CONFERENCE, n:
A gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done. -- Fred Allen
- CONSCIENCE, n:
The inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking. -- H. L. Mencken
- CONSERVATIVE, n:
A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce
- CORPORATION, n:
An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. -- Ambrose Bierce
- COWARD, n:
(1) One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs. -- Ambrose Bierce
- COWARD, n:
(2) A hero with wife, kids, and a mortgage. -- Marvin Kitman
- CRIMINAL, n:
A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. -- Howard Scott
- CRITIC, n:
One who boasts of being "hard to please" because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce
- CYNIC, n:
A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. -- Ambrose Bierce
- D
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- DARLING, n:
The popular form of address used in speaking to a member of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment remember. -- Oliver Herford.
- DAY, n:
A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. -- Ambrose Bierce
- DELIBERATION, n:
The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on. -- Ambrose Bierce
- DEMOCRACY, n:
The recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. -- E.B. White
- DEPRESSION. n:
A period during which we have to get along without the things our grandparents never dreamed about. -- Anon.
- DESTINY, n:
A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure. -- Ambrose Bierce
- DIET, n:
The penalty for exceeding the feed limit. -- Anon.
- DIPLOMACY, n:
(1) The art of saying 'nice doggie' till you can find a rock. -- Wynn Catlin
- DIPLOMACY, n:
(2) To do and say the nastiest thing in the nicest way. -- Isaac Goldberg
- DIPLOMAT, n:
A headwaiter who is allowed to sit down occaisionally. -- Peter Ustinov
- DRUG, n:
A substance that, when injected into a guinea pig, produces a scientifc paper -- Anon.
- E
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- ECONOMIST, n:
A man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible. -- Alfred P. Knopf
- EDITOR, n:
A person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to separate the wheat from the
chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed. -- Elbert Hubbard
- ELBONICS, n:
The art of maneuvering for the center armrest in a theater or airplane. -- Anon.
- ELEPHANT, n:
A mouse built to government specifications. -- Robert A. Heinlein
- ETIQUETTE, n:
The little things you do that you don't want to do. -- Anon.
- EXECUTIVE, n:
A man who talks to the visitors while others are doing the work. -- Anon.
- EXPERIENCE, n:
What causes a person to make new mistakes instead of the same old ones. -- Anon.
- EXPERT, n:
(1) An ordinary man away from home giving advice. -- Oscar Wilde
- EXPERT, n:
(2) Someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing. -- Nicholas Murray Butler
- EXPERT, n:
(3) A person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared. -- P.J. Plauger
- EXPERT, n:
(4) A person who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. -- Niels Bohr
- EXPERT, n:
(5) A person who is never in doubt but often in error. -- Anon
- F
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- FACTORIAL, n: Someone's attempt to make math look exciting.
Steven Wright
- FAIRY TALE, n: a horror story to prepare children for the newspapers. -- Anon
- FAKIR, n: a psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to have shinnied up a rope and vanished. -- Anon
- FAMOUS, adj: Conspicuously miserable. -- Ambrose Bierce
- FARM, n: A hunk of land on which, if you get up early enough mornings and work late enough nights, you'll make a fortune--if you strike oil on it. -- Jim Jordan
- FIDELITY, n: A virtue particular to those about to be betrayed. -- Ambrose Bierce
- FOG LAMPS, n: obnoxiously bright lamps mounted on the fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the driver's brain is in a fog. -- Anon
- FUTURE, n: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured. -- Ambrose Bierce
- FURBLING, n: Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank, even when you are the only person in line. -- Rich Hall
- G
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- GENEALOGIST, n:
One who traces your family history back as far as your money will go. -- Anon.
- GOLF, n:
(1) An ineffectual attempt to direct an uncontrollable sphere into an inaccessible hole with instruments ill-adapted to the purpose. -- Winston Churchill
- GOLF, n:
(2)A sport wherein one balances a ball an inch-and-a-quarter in diameter on a ball 8,000 miles in diameter, and then tries to hit the small one. -- Anon
- GOSSIP, n:
(1) The art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid. -- Walter Winchell
- GOSSIP, n:
(2) When you hear something you like about someone you don't. -- Earl Wilson
- H
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- HANGOVER, n:
A self-inflicted wound. -- Anon
- HEREDITY, n:
What a man believes in until his son begins to behave like a delinquent. -- Anon.
- HOPE, n:
The feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent. -- Jean Kerr
- HORSE SENSE, n:
Stable thinking. -- Anon
- HOSPITAL BED, n:
A taxi parked with the meter running. -- Anon
- I
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- IDIOT, n:
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce
- J
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- JOURNALIST, n:
A professional whose job it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand. -- Lord Northcliffe
- JUDGE, n:
A law student who marks his own papers. -- H.L. Mencken
- JURY, n:
Twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. -- Robert Frost
- K
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- KISS, n:
A course of procedure, cunningly devised, for the mutual stoppage of conversation when words are superfluous. -- Oliver Herford
- L
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- LABOR, n:
One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. -- Ambrose Bierce
- LIBERAL, n:
(1) A conservative that has been smugged by reality. -- Anon
- LIBERAL, n:
(2) A man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. -- Robert Frost
- LIFE, n:
(1) A party jou join after it has started and leave before it's finished. -- Elsa Maxwell
- LIFE, n:
(2) The saddest thing there is, next to death. -- Edith Wharton
- LITIGATION, n:
A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. -- Ambrose Bierce
- M
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- MANAGEMENT, n:
The art of getting other people to do the work. -- Anon
- MARRIAGE, n:
An institution which is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the minimum of opportunity. -- George Bernard Shaw
- MEETING, n:
An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or group not represented in the room must solve a problem. -- Anon
- METAPHOR, n:
A way of holding the most truth in the least space. -- Orson Scott Card
- MIDDLE AGE, n:
(1)When your age starts to show around your middleThe art of raising eyebrows instead of the roof. -- Anon
- MIDDLE AGE, n:
(2)That time of life when you'd rather not have a good time than recover from it. -- Fletcher Henderson
- MIRACLE, n:
An event described by those to whom it ws told by men who did not see it. -- Elbert Hubbard
- MODERN ART, n:
What happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea -- John Ciardi
- N
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- NATION, n:
A society united by its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbors. -- W.R. Inge
- O
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- OPPORTUNIST, n:
One who goes ahead and does what you always planned to do. -- Anon
- OPTIMISM, n:
The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious. -- Ambrose Bierce
- ORATORY, n:
The art of making deeo noises from the chest sound like important messages from the brain. -- Anon
- P
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- PAIN, n:
An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another. -- Ambrose Bierce
- PAINTING, n:
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. -- Ambrose Bierce
- PATRON, n:
A customer who doesn't ask prices. -- Anon
- PEACE, n:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce
- PEDESTRIAN, n:
Someone who thought there were a couple of gallons left in the tank. -- Anon
- PETS, n,pl:
The only members of your family that you actually like. -- Anon
- PHILANTHROPIST, n:
(1) A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket. -- Ambrose Bierce
- PHILANTHROPIST, n:
(2) One who gives away what he should give back. -- Anon
- PHILOSOPHY, n:
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. -- Ambrose Bierce
- PLATITUDE, n:
An idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true. -- H. L. Mencken
- POISE, n:
The art of raising eyebrows instead of the roof. -- Anon
- POLITICS,
n: War Without Bloodshed. -- Mao Tse Tung
- POOR, adj:
When you have too much month left at the end of tour money. -- Anon
- PROFESSOR, n:
(1) A person whose job is to tell students how to solve the problems of life he avoided by becoming a professor. -- Anon
- PROFESSOR, n:
(2) One who talks in someone elses sleep. -- W. H. Auden
- PROPAGANDA, n:
Baloney disguised as food for thought. -- Cincinnati Inquirer
- PURITANISM, n:
The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. -- H.L. Mencken
- Q
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- QUOTATION, n:
The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated. -- Ambrose Bierce
- R
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- RESPONSIBILITY, n:
A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. -- Ambrose Bierce
- ROCK 'N' ROLL, n:
Monotony tinged with hysteria. -- Vance packard
- RETRACTION, n:
The revision of an insult to give it wider circulation. -- Anon
- S
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- SATIRIST, n:
A man who discovers unpleasant things about himself, then says them about other people. -- Peter McArthur
- SCIENCE, n:An orderly arrangement of what at the moment appear to be facts. -- Anon
- SEX, n:
(1) The most fun you can have without laughing. -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
- SEX, n:
(2) The thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble. -- John Barrymore
- SEX, n:
(3) God's biggest joke on human beings. -- Bette Davis
- SKIING, n:
The only sport where you can spend an arm and a leg to break an arm and a leg. -- Henry Beard
- SPOUSE, n:
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single. -- Anon
- STATESMAN, n:
Any politician it's considered safe to name a school after. -- Bill Vaughan
- STATISTICAL ANALYSIS, n:
Mysterious, sometimes bizarre, manipulations performed upon the collected data of an experiment in order to obscure the fact that the results have no generalizable meaning for humanity. Commonly, computers are used, lending an additional aura of unreality to the proceedings. -- Anon
- STATISTICIAN, n:
(1) A person who can draw a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. -- Anon
- STATISTICIAN, n:
(2) Someone who can put his head in the oven and his feet in the freezer and tell you, "on average, I feel just fine." -- Anon
- SUBBURBIA, n:
A place where the developers bulldoze all of the trees -- then name the streets after them.. -- Bill Vaughan
- SWEATER, n:
A garment worn by child when it's mother is feeling chilly. -- Ambrose Bierce
- SYNONYM, n:
A word used in place of another word you can't spell. -- Anon
- T
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- TACT, n:
The art of saying nothing when there is nothing to say. -- Anon
- TEACHER, n:
A person who helps you solve problems you'd never have without them. -- Anon
- TRUTH, n:
(1) 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. -- Ambrose Bierce
- TRUTH, n:
(2) Something you stumble into when you think you're going somewhere else. -- Jerry Garcia
- TV, cont.:
A clever contraction derived from the words "Terrible Vaudville" - we call it a medium becasue nothing is well done. -- Goodman Ace
- U
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- URBAN COWBOY, n:
One who is typically all hat and no cow. -- Anon
- USER, n:
The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot." -- Dave Berry
- V
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- VACATION, n:
Time off to remind employees that the business can get along without them. -- Anon
- VEGETARIAN, n:
A latin word that translates as "really bad hunter." -- Anon
- VIRUS, n:
A Latin medical term meaning, 'your guess is as good as mine.' -- Anon.
- W
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- WAR, n:
(1) A by-product of the arts of peace -- Ambrose Bierce
- WAR, n:
(2) Politics with blood. -- Mao Tse Tung
- WEDDING, n:
A necessary formality before securing a divorce. -- John Clay
- X
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- XEROX, n:
A trademark for a photocopying device that can make rapid reproductionsof human error, perfectly. -- Merle L. Mecham
- Z
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- ZEAL, n:
A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. -- Ambrose Bierce
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