Here is a bunch of definitions by Ambrose Bierce that are humorous but also serious.

He had distinguished service in the Civil War, edited the San Francisco Newsletter, wrote three novels and was a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. He went to Mexico in 1913 and was never heard from.

He is best remembered for his sardonic definitions which were much quoted in London.

Here are some of his definitions:

Beggar: One who has retired on the assistance of his friends.

Freedom: A political condition that every nation supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. The distinction between freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able to find a living specimen of either.

Red-skin: A North American Indian whose skin is not red--at least on the outside.

Zenith: A point in the heavens directly overhead to a standing man or a growing cabbage.

Self-evident: Evident to one's self and to nobody else.

King: A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head" although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.

Infancy: The period in our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

Portuguese: A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.

Un-American: Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.

Historian: A broad-gage gossip.

Hatchet: A young axe, known among Indians as Tomahawk.

Diagnosis: A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse.

Diplomacy: The patriotic act of lying for one's country.

April Fool: The March fool with another month added to his folly.

Saw: A trite popular saying, or proverb (figurative and colloquial), so called because it makes its way into a wooden head.

Goose: A bird that supplies quills for writing, these, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.

Riches: The savings of many in the hands of one.

Yesterday: The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.

Recollect: To recall with additions something previously not known.

Piano: A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

Convent: A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness.

Twice: Once too often.

Plagiarize: To take thoughts or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.

Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

Proof-reader: A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.

Dr. A.O. Goldsmith of Kennett is a retired director of the School of Journalism, Louisiana State University.