Transcribing the Devils Dictionary: Abasement - Ability

Abasement, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing and employer.

Abatis, n. Rubbish in front of a fort to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.

Abdication, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.

Poor Isabella's dead, whose abdication
Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
For that performance 'twere unfair to scold her
She wisely left a throne to hot to hold her.
To History she'll be no royal riddle--
Merely the plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.
G.J.

Abdomen, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial right, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race would become graminivorous.

Ability, n. The natural equipment to acccomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.

Bierce, Ambrose. The Devil's Dictionary.
New York: Dover Publications, Inc.:
1993.