The Cynic's Word Book. Bierce Ambrose

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           And prove your views intelligent and just.

      CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

      CONVERSATION, n. A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.

      CORONATION, n. The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.

      CORPORAL, n. A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military ladder.

      CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for securing individual profit without individual responsibility.

      CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.

      COURT FOOL, n. The plaintiff.

      COWARD, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

      CRAFT, n. A fool's substitute for brains.

      CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.

      In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend their nature afterward. – Sir James Merivale.

      CREDITOR, n. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

      CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.

      CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody has ever tried to please him.

      CROSS, n. An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity, but really antedating it by thousands of years. By many it has been believed to be identical with the crux ansata of the ancient phallic worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that, to the rites of primitive peoples. We have today the White Cross as a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent neutrality in war. Having in mind the former, the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre to the effect following:

      CUI BQNO? [Latin] What good would that do me?

      CUNNING, n. The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person from a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction and great material adversity. An Italian proverb says: "The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses."