Editing The Wickedictionary (section)

==M==
'''Machines:''' ''n. pl.'' labour saving devices efficient enough to put humans out of employment, but with the ingenious advantage that they create a sufficient number of problems to employ twice as many to solve them.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Mad:''' ''adj.'' affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.<ref>Ambrose Bierce, ''The Devil's Dictionary'' (1911)</ref>

'''Magic:''' ''n.'' any technology sufficiently advanced that its exceeds your ability to understand how it works.<ref>Adapted from Arthur C. Clarke and Jony Ive</ref>

'''Maintenance-free:''' ''adj.'' irreparable.<ref>Isham Research</ref>

'''Majority:''' ''n.'' a large group of people who have gotten tired of thinking and have decided to accept somebody else’s opinion.

'''Management:''' ''n.'' 1. a class of semi-skilled corporate hirelings whose rise within the organization correlates directly with the amount of work they delegate to their more talented underlings.<ref>Rick Bayan</ref>

'''Management:''' ''n.'' 2. administration.<ref>Isham Research</ref>

'''Management consultancy:''' ''n.'' a highly effective and legally permissible confidence trick.<ref>Contributed specially for ''The Wickedictionary'' by Joshua Arnold-Foster, 2009</ref>

'''Manifesto:''' ''n.'' 1. a statement of what you would get up to if you had talent, honour and principles.

'''Manifesto:''' ''n.'' 2. organized gibberish masquerading as a panacea for all society's ills.<ref>Leonard Rossiter</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 1. is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.<ref>Francois de La Rochefoucauld</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.''  2. is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.<ref>George Bernard Shaw</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 3. is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.<ref>
Alan King </ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 4. is when a woman exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one.<ref>Adapted from Helen Rowland</ref> 

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 5. is the chief cause of divorce.<ref>Groucho Marx</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 6. a situation where a man loses his bachelor's degree and a woman gains her masters.

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 7. the demonstration that warfare between the sexes does not work, thus serving as a salient reminder that warfare between the races is equally doomed.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 8. a bond formed by mutual lack of common sense.

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 9. is that which takes the vastness of all the possibilities lying on the horizon of life, swiftly slaughtering them all to leave just one.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 10. the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.<ref>Ambrose Bierce, ''The Devil's Dictionary'' (1911)</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 11. is where the chain of wedlock is so heavy that it needs two to carry it, and sometimes three.<ref>Alexandre Dumas</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 12. is a condition where it is impossible to be a fool and not know it.<ref>Adapted from H. L. Mencken</ref> 

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 13. is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 14. game over. 

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 15. the prerequisite for divorce.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 16. a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking.<ref>Sam Kinison</ref>

'''Marriage:''' ''n.'' 17. is where you have to admit it when you're wrong, and shut up when you're right. 

'''Martial arts:''' ''n.'' a family of Asiatic self-defense disciplines consisting largely of sweeping ornamental gestures of the arms and legs; amusing to look at but disappointingly ineffective when one's opponent is armed with a semi-automatic.<ref>Rick Bayan</ref>

'''Martyrdom:''' ''n.'' is the only way a man can become famous without ability.<ref>George Bernard Shaw, ''The Devil's Disciple'', Act II</ref>

'''Mastication:''' ''n.'' gastronomic music performed on the xylophone of the mandibles.<ref>Contributed specially for ''The Wickedictionary'' by Lloyd Irving, 2010</ref>

'''Mathematical proof:''' ''n.''  is the demonstration that a proposition is correct with a level of certainty that at least two mathematicians somewhere in the world understand it.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2009</ref>

'''Mathematician:''' ''n.'' 1. a device for turning coffee into theorems.<ref>Paul Erdos</ref>

'''Mathematician:''' ''n.'' 2. one well-versed in calculus of the variations, Riemann manifolds, and higher algebras, but who cannot count, do simple arithmetic or balance his accounts.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Mathematics:''' ''n.'' 1. a product of the human imagination that sometimes works on simplified models of reality.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Mathematics:''' ''n.'' 2. is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.<ref>Alfred North Whitehead</ref>

'''Mathematics:''' ''n.'' 3. is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.<ref>David Hilbert</ref>

'''Mathematics:''' ''n.'' 4. the Darwinian struggle for life of ideas that leads to the survival of the concepts which we actually use, often believed to have come to us fully armed with goodness from some mysterious Platonic repository of truths.<ref>Simon Altmann</ref> 

'''Maturity:''' ''n.'' 1. the status obtained after a sufficient number of years of immaturity have elapsed.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Maturity:''' ''n.'' 2. is a state we reach the day we don't need to be lied to about anything.<ref> Adapted from Frank Yerby</ref>

'''Medicine:''' ''n.''  consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.<ref>Voltaire</ref> 

'''Memory:''' ''n.'' is the thing you forget with.<ref>Alexander Chase</ref>

'''Metaphysics:''' ''n.'' is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.<ref>F. H. Bradley</ref>

'''Method actor:''' ''n.'' one who can't act, so instead becomes the character.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Military action:''' ''n.''  an ultimate gift to a regime that gives what its hardliners were actively seeking to provoke, in order to unify their own internal divisions.<ref>Derek Abbott, Definition created for ''Wickedictionary,'' (24 December 2009)</ref>

'''Military intelligence:''' ''n.'' a contradiction in terms.<ref>Groucho Marx</ref>

'''Military justice:''' ''n.'' is to justice what military music is to music.<ref>Groucho Marx</ref> 

'''Mime:''' ''n.'' a dramatic device that does little violence to the language.<ref>Leonard Rossiter</ref>

'''Minimalism:''' ''n.'' a rather long word for describing the opposite.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Mining:''' ''n.'' the rape of virgin soil, to avoid the monotony of recycling.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Miracle:''' ''n.'' 1. a natural law that happens once.

'''Miracle:''' ''n.'' 2. (''scientific term'') when plotting experimental data on a graph, any inexplicable point that is more than a standard deviation from the best fit curve, which cannot be repeated no matter how hard you try, must be a miracle.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Misdemeanor:''' ''n.'' an infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.<ref>Ambrose Bierce, ''The Devil's Dictionary'' (1911)</ref>

'''Miser:''' ''n.'' a person who lives poor so that he can die rich.

'''Misogynist:''' ''n.'' a man who hates women as much as women hate one another.<ref>H. L. Mencken, ''A Mencken Chrestomathy'' (1949)</ref>

'''Mission statement:''' ''n.'' a corporate creed passed on to employees so they can remember why they’re skipping lunch.<ref>Rick Bayan</ref>

'''Mistake:''' ''n.'' making a mistake is an excellent means for getting everyone's undivided attention.

'''Moderate:''' ''n.'' (''politics'') one who cannot find equilibrium at either end of the political spectrum.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Moderation:''' ''n.'' a form of extremism that places a tight grip upon the human impulse.<ref>Derek Abbott, 2010</ref>

'''Money:''' ''n.''  a medium of exchange whose chief value lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.<ref>Adapted from H. L. Mencken</ref> 

'''Monogamy:''' ''n.'' bigamy is having a wife too many, monogamy is the same.<ref>Oscar Wilde</ref>

'''Moral indignation:''' ''n.'' is jealousy with a halo.<ref>H. G. Wells</ref>

'''Morality:''' ''n.'' is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.<ref>H. L. Mencken</ref>

'''Morals:''' ''n.'' excuses for not behaving badly.<ref>Contributed specially for ''The Wickedictionary'' by Lloyd Irving, 2010</ref>

'''Mother:''' ''n.'' someone who thinks that girls who go after her son are brazen and the ones who don’t are stupid.

'''Motivation:''' ''n.'' the point reached by individuals when they have put off everything else, including procrastination.<ref>Julian O'Shea</ref>

'''Mugging:''' ''n.'' begging by force.<ref>Geoff Dyer, ''The Colour of Memory'' (1989)</ref>

'''Multilateralism:''' ''n.'' 1. an attempt to create polite mob rule. <ref>K. R., who wishes to remain anonymous</ref>

'''Multilateralism:''' ''n.'' 2. a useful form of employment for surplus public servants who wish to live in Paris.<ref>K. R., who wishes to remain anonymous</ref>

'''Murder:''' ''v.'' the act of killing, unless it is done in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.<ref>Adapted from Voltaire
in ''Rights'' (1771).</ref>

'''Musicologist:''' ''n.'' a man who can read music but can't hear it.<ref>Sir Thomas Beecham</ref>

'''Music video:''' ''n.'' how film-school cinematographers and posturing post-pubescent stars collaborated to keep rock music on artificial life support long after it should have died naturally.<ref>Rick Bayan</ref>

'''Mythology:''' ''n.'' the early primitive beliefs of a society, as opposed to the real account that it invents later.<ref>Adapted from, Ambrose Bierce, ''The Devil's Dictionary'' (1911)</ref>