Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.

This line is one of Ambrose Bierce’s satirical “definitions” from his lexicon of cynical wit, written during his career as a journalist and columnist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bierce skewers American moral self-congratulation by targeting holiday ritual—especially the way public displays of “gratitude” can become conventional, performative, and socially enforced. The reference to eating turkey on “certain religious anniversaries” points most recognizably to Thanksgiving (and, more broadly, festive Christian-season meals), where a traditional dish is treated as evidence of virtue. Bierce’s broader project in these definitions is to puncture pieties by translating them into blunt, worldly motives.

Bierce treats the turkey not as a neutral food but as a cultural prop: consuming it on prescribed holidays becomes a badge of righteousness. The joke hinges on pseudo-scientific phrasing (“peculiar property of attesting”) to expose how easily religious or civic sentiment can be reduced to ritual consumption. In Bierce’s view, the act of eating a traditional meal is mistaken for (or substituted for) genuine piety and gratitude—virtues that should be inward and ethical rather than ceremonial. The definition thus criticizes hypocrisy and social conformity: people can feel (and be seen as) thankful or devout by following custom, without any deeper moral transformation.