Pick the words beginning with P as defined by Ambrose Bierce in his 1906 classic 'The Devil's Dictionary'. This one includes some of my favorite definitions from the book.
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.
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.
A traveler that is taken seriously.
To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.
To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.
The most acceptable hypocrisy.
An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
A sovereign's right to do wrong.
A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in a cone of critics.
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