Hand
n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

Happiness
n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

Haughty
adj. Proud and disdainful, like a waiter.

Hemp
n. A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.

History
n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Homicide
n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

Honest
adj. Afflicted with an impediment in his dealing.

Honorable
adj. [1.] Afflicted with an impediment in one’s reach. In legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, “the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.” [2.] Holding or having held a certain office in the public service — a title of courtesy, as “the Honorable Snatchgobble Bilque, Member of Congress.”

Hypocrite
n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises

Selections taken from the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce as they apply to the 45^th president of the United States.

Gawk
n. A person of imperfect grace, somewhat overgiven to the vice of falling over his own feet.

Generally
adj. Usually, ordinarily, as, Men generally lie, A woman is generally treacherous, etc.

Gent
n. The [short fingered] vulgarian‘s idea of a gentleman. The male of the genus Hoodlum.

Genuine
adj. Real, veritable, as, A genuine counterfeit, Genuine hypocrisy, etc.

Gold
n. A yellow metal greatly prized for its convenience in the various kinds of robbery known as trade. The word was formerly spelled “God” — the l was inserted to distinguish it from the name of another and inferior deity. Gold is the heaviest of all the metals except platinum, and a considerable amount of it will sink a man so much more quickly and deeply than platinum will that the latter is made into lifebelts and used as a lifting power for balloons. British gold, an imaginary metal greatly used in the manufacture of American traitors to the patriotic axiom that two and two are five.

Gold-Bug
n. In political matters, a miscreant who has the wickedness to know that legislation cannot maintain a permanent relation between the values of two metals, even by the luminous device of binding them together in the same coins. A miller who grinds the faces of the poor and takes the whole grist for toll. A hideous monster that disturbs the Bulletin’s repose by sitting astride Deacon Fitch’s stomach, picking the bones of “the debtor class” and blaspheming the dollar of our fathers.

Government
n. A modern Chronos who devours his own children. The priesthood are charged with the duty of preparing them for his tooth.

Governor
n. An aspirant to the United States Senate.

Grime
n. A peculiar substance widely distributed throughout nature, but found most abundantly on the hands of eminent American statesmen. It is insoluble in public money.

Groan
n. The language in which a Republican Federal officeholder expounds his view of the political situation.

Guardian
n. One who undertakes to protect from others what he is not ready to get for himself.

Selections taken from the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce as they apply to the 45^th president of the United States.