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J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, jacere, to throw, because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.
Ambrose Bierce
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Ambrose Bierce
Born: 1842
Born: June 24
Aphorist
Journalist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Stones
Latin
Consonant
Shapes
Assumption
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Dog
Stone
Vowels
Nations
Thrown
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Use
Assuming
Assumes
Shape
Verbs
Throw
Tail
English
Tails
Vowel
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To the eye of failure success is an accident.
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Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber they fertilize.
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Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'
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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.
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PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.
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The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two.
Ambrose Bierce
Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion in Constantinople, one who does.
Ambrose Bierce
FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.
Ambrose Bierce
A modern school where football is taught.
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Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere survivals - as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.
Ambrose Bierce
Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
Ambrose Bierce
RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.
Ambrose Bierce
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
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No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.
Ambrose Bierce
SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.
Ambrose Bierce
OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.
Ambrose Bierce