Chap­ter K opens with an imag­ined his­to­ry of the let­ter itself, tying K to an ancient cul­ture known as the Cerathi­ans, who Bierce claims once flour­ished in the land of Smero. The let­ter’s mod­ern form, accord­ing to his mock-his­to­ry, emerged from a catastrophe—the col­lapse of a sacred temple—which trans­formed the Cerathi­an char­ac­ter “Klatch” into a sym­bol of loss and ruin. Bierce con­nects the shape of the let­ter to tragedy, humor­ous­ly sug­gest­ing that the alpha­bet itself bears the weight of for­got­ten dis­as­ter. His account isn’t his­tor­i­cal but satir­i­cal, using fab­ri­cat­ed ety­mol­o­gy to mock how soci­eties mythol­o­gize lan­guage and its ori­gins. Through this, he sat­i­rizes both lin­guis­tic schol­ar­ship and humanity’s need to link mean­ing to myth.

Mov­ing on to Keep, Bierce reflects on the futil­i­ty of pos­ses­sion, espe­cial­ly in death. He points out that while peo­ple claim to “keep” their rep­u­ta­tions, trea­sures, or lega­cies, none of these endure once life ends. This def­i­n­i­tion cap­tures the irony of per­ma­nence, where the very word sug­gests con­trol that van­ish­es with mor­tal­i­ty. He uses this to show how lan­guage con­ceals real­i­ty, trans­form­ing pow­er­less­ness into pride. Sim­i­lar­ly, Kill is dis­tilled into a bleak­ly com­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion: to cre­ate a vacan­cy with­out pro­vid­ing a replace­ment. Bierce cuts through the moral and legal debates around vio­lence, instead expos­ing the hol­low prac­ti­cal­i­ty of the act. It’s not pun­ish­ment or justice—but admin­is­tra­tion.

The word Kind­ness receives no mer­cy either. Rather than virtue, it’s framed as a strategy—a cal­cu­lat­ed move designed to soft­en the recip­i­ent for future exploita­tion. Acts of kind­ness, Bierce implies, are often the first step in secur­ing lever­age. His def­i­n­i­tion doesn’t deny gen­uine good­will exists, but ques­tions whether it’s the rule or the excep­tion. In Kilt, he turns his atten­tion to cul­tur­al attire, gen­tly mock­ing the roman­ti­cism sur­round­ing tra­di­tion. By depict­ing it as “worn by Scotch­men in Amer­i­ca,” he com­ments on the awk­ward trans­plant of her­itage and the the­atri­cal way peo­ple dis­play their roots.

In King, Bierce directs his full satire at monar­chy, defin­ing the ruler not as noble, but as a fig­ure propped up by cer­e­mo­ny and illu­sion. The king, in his eyes, embod­ies absurdity—someone adorned with pow­er but often lack­ing wis­dom or neces­si­ty. This entry lays bare the the­atri­cal foun­da­tions of roy­al­ty, where sym­bol­ism out­weighs sub­stance. King’s Evil, once believed to be cur­able by roy­al touch, becomes an entry that ques­tions the log­ic behind lead­er­ship and faith. Bierce draws a line from old super­sti­tion to mod­ern polit­i­cal rit­u­als, such as the hand­shake, mock­ing how obso­lete tra­di­tions are repack­aged as respectabil­i­ty. The tran­si­tion from sacred touch to polit­i­cal ges­ture speaks vol­umes about how author­i­ty is per­formed, not earned.

With Kiss, Bierce strips away romance and instead paints it as a con­fus­ing inter­sec­tion of impulse and tra­di­tion. He calls it a poet­ic fabrication—something cel­e­brat­ed for cen­turies yet still debat­ed in ori­gin and mean­ing. The kiss is both sacred and triv­ial, a sym­bol that speaks loud­er than it should. His def­i­n­i­tion reminds us that what’s deeply emo­tion­al may also be hol­low rep­e­ti­tion. Klep­toman­ic gets reframed not as a sick­ness of the poor, but a priv­i­lege of the rich. Bierce observes that theft becomes “klep­to­ma­nia” only when the crim­i­nal is social­ly accept­able. Through this, he expos­es how lan­guage pro­tects the pow­er­ful by refram­ing crime as com­pul­sion.

The chap­ter clos­es with Knight, a title once tied to val­or but now reduced to cer­e­mo­ny. Bierce describes how nobil­i­ty, once earned through brav­ery, now gets dis­trib­uted so wide­ly that even dogs are knight­ed. This humor­ous exag­ger­a­tion illus­trates how pres­tige is dilut­ed when grant­ed with­out mer­it. His com­men­tary reflects on the ero­sion of standards—where sym­bols remain, but mean­ing has van­ished. In this entry, Bierce isn’t mock­ing chival­ry itself, but the mod­ern insti­tu­tions that imi­tate its form with­out embrac­ing its val­ues.

Each def­i­n­i­tion in this chap­ter builds on the theme that lan­guage is a mirror—sometimes dis­tort­ed, some­times unflat­ter­ing, but always reveal­ing. Through irony and inven­tion, Bierce encour­ages read­ers to ques­tion the mean­ing behind famil­iar words. His def­i­n­i­tions are not meant to replace the dictionary’s, but to deep­en our under­stand­ing of how lan­guage reflects human frailty. With each entry under K, he reminds us that words, like peo­ple, are often more com­pli­cat­ed than they appear.