With all due respect to Ambrose Bierce, Diogenes, and Oscar Wilde:
Herb: An unregulated drug sold by people who condemn as charlatans the people who sell regulated drugs. An essential part of many faith healing religions, especially the laying-on-of-hands(-onto-wallets).
Homeopathy: Herbal medicine taken to the logical conclusion. The irrefutable proof that water is the universal solvent: It dissolves both the bank account and the life of the patient.
Religion: The demonstration that civilization is no match for remonstration, abjuration, conjuration, consecration, and agglutination.
Respect: What every idea is due, save for the intelligible ones. The notion that everything is true if you can only shout loudly enough.
Sexually Liberated (female): “She’s had the clap so many times it amounts to applause.”
Sexually Liberated (male): Male.
Venereal Disease (you): An ineradicable mark besmirching your good name.
Venereal Disease (me): The flu.
Toleration: The unconditional love you extend a toothache prior to a visit to the dentist, or a relative prior to a visit to the mortuary.
Hmm. I love Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, but that was the work of a single cynic staking out particular ground. Dopers vary ignificantly more, and your definitio0ns seem to be staking out ground not merely cynical, but political. You’ll get a lot of flak, I predict, and little agreement.
Thermodynamics: A system of laws regarding the transfer of heat, work or mechanical energy - to be cited as being violated any time a more efficient version of any machine or process is discussed.
Oh, of course. I could never hold a candle to Bierce or his works. But there is still something to be said for a work fundamentally divided against itself serving as a snapshot of a specific subculture’s mental space. The work to compare this to, really, is the Jargon File, except the Jargon File is more traditionally useful as a dictionary.
