Since I'm sure everybody is so enamored of my recent propensity to post the writings of the not-so-bad late 19th century writer Ambrose Bierce, I thought i'de kick ya down a few more of his perspicacious definitions. So why shouln't i be " a chronic pain in your ass"? ... This was, after all, a somewhat pygalgic posting endeavor but ole Ambrose and his musings... seems a bloke to share a pint or two with!
"ACCORDIAN:n an instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
BASILISK:n the cockatrice. A sort of serpent hatched from the egg of a cock. The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal. Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved. Juno afterward restored the reptile's sight, and hid it in a cave. Nothing is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk, but the cocks have stopped laying.
CERBERUS:n the watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance- against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance. Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited him with as many as a hundred. Professor Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates and makes the number twenty-seven- a judgement that would be entirely conclusive had Professor Graybill known (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.
" (
now would be a good time for ya'll to grab a beer or take a piss or just let out a very long sigh) "INFIDEL:n in New York, one who does not believe in the Christian tradition; in Constaninople, one who does. A kind of scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributary to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoosm presbyters, hierophats, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, prependiaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, benificiaries, clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocecesians, deans, sub-deans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, heirarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church-wardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragens, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and pumpums.
MISERICORDE:n a dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.
TOPE:v to tipple, swill, booze, guzzle, lush, bib or swig. In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are at the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted against the hard-drinking Christians, the abstemious Mohammedans go down like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef-eating, brandy-and-soda-guzzling Britons held in subjection two hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same aryan race. With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate Spaniard out of his possessions! From the time that the Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of western Europe, and lay drunk in every conquered port, it has been the same way. Everywhere, the nations that drink too much are observed to fight rather well, and not too righteously. Wherefore the esteemable old ladies who abolished the canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially augmented the nations' military power.
TSETSE FLY:n 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) WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH:n in Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.
Oh! what would Mr. Bierce have to say of our current world?
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