Bath

noun

A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

    The man who taketh a steam bath
    He loseth all the skin he hath,
    And, for he's boiled a brilliant red,
    Thinketh to cleanliness he's wed,
    Forgetting that his lungs he's soiling
    With dirty vapors of the boiling.

        Richard Gwow


—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary