The Devil's Dictionary

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What do you do with new words? Look them up in a Oxford, Webster or Cambridge dictionary? Have you ever referred to The Devil's Dictionary?

This Dictionary was written by Ambrose Bierce, a satirist. Here are some entries in his interesting dictionary.


ABSURDITY, n.
A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

ACADEME, n.
An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

ACADEMY, n.
[from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught.

ACCIDENT, n.
An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.

ACCORDION, n.
An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

ACCUSE, v.t.
To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.

ACHIEVEMENT, n.
The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

ACQUAINTANCE, n.
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

ACTUALLY, adv.
Perhaps; possibly.

ADHERENT, n.
A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.

ADMINISTRATION, n.
An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.

ADMIRAL, n.
That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the figure-head does the thinking.

ADMIRATION, n.
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

ADVICE, n.
The smallest current coin.

AIR, n.
A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.

ALLIANCE, n.
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

AMBITION, n.
An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

ANTIPATHY, n.
The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.

APOLOGIZE, v.i.
To lay the foundation for a future offence.

APPLAUSE, n.
The echo of a platitude.

APRIL FOOL, n.
The March fool with another month added to his folly.

ARCHITECT, n.
One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

ARDOR, n.
The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

ARENA, n.
In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.

ARMOR, n.
The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.

ARREST, v.t.
Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.
God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
The Unauthorized Version


AUCTIONEER, n.
The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

AUSTRALIA, n.
A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.

( to be continued)

 

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B

BABE or BABY, n.
A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.

BACCHUS, n.
A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

BACK, n.
That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.

BACKBITE, v.t.
To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.

BAIT, n.
A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty.

BATTLE, n.
A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

BEARD, n.
The hair that is commonly cut off by those who justly execrate the absurd Chinese custom of shaving the head.

BEG, v.
To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.

BEGGAR, n.
One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.

BIGAMY, n.
A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.

BIGOT, n.
One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

BIRTH, n.
The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.

BORE, n.
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

BOTANY, n.
The science of vegetables -- those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill- smelling.

BOTTLE-NOSED, adj.
Having a nose created in the image of its maker.

BOUNDARY, n.
In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

BRAIN, n.
An apparatus with which we think what we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on.

BRIDE, n.
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

BRUTE, n.
See HUSBAND.

 

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C

CABBAGE, n.
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

CALAMITY, n.
A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

CALLOUS, adj.
Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.

CANNON, n.
An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.

CAPITAL, n.
The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat. Capital Punishment, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons -- including all the assassins -- entertain grave misgivings.

CARNIVOROUS, adj.
Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.

CARTESIAN, adj.
Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum -- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

CAT, n.
A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
This is a dog,
This is a cat.
This is a frog,
This is a rat.
Run, dog, mew, cat.
Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.
Elevenson

CEMETERY, n.
An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.

CHILDHOOD, n.
The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

CIRCUS, n.
A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.

CLARIONET, n.
An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet -- two clarionets.

CLERGYMAN, n.
A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.

CLOCK, n.
A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.
A busy man complained one day:
"I get no time!" "What's that you say?"
Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;
"You have, sir, all the time there is.
There's plenty, too, and don't you doubt it --
We're never for an hour without it."
Purzil Crofe


COMFORT, n.
A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.

COMMENDATION, n.
The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles, but do not equal, our own.

COMMERCE, n.
A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.

COMMONWEALTH, n.
An administrative entity operated by an incalculable multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously efficient.

COMPROMISE, n.
Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

COMPULSION, n.
The eloquence of power.

CONDOLE, v.i.
To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.

CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n.
One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided by him to C.

CONGRATULATION, n.
The civility of envy.

CONGRESS, n.
A body of men who meet to repeal laws.

CONNOISSEUR, n.
A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.
An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him. "Pauillac, 1873," he murmured and died.

CONSERVATIVE, n.
A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

CONSOLATION, n.
The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

CONSULT, v.i.
To seek another's disapproval of a course already decided on.

CONTEMPT, n.
The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.

CONTROVERSY, n.
A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.

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

CONVERSATION, n.
A fair to 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.

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

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

CRITIC, n.
A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

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."

CUPID, n.
The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of its deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the wounds of an arrow -- of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work -- this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep of prosperity.

CURIOSITY, n.
An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

CURSE, v.t.
Energetically to belabor with a verbal slap-stick. This is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is commonly fatal to the victim. Nevertheless, the liability to a cursing is a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of life insurance.

 

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D

DANGER, n.
A savage beast which, when it sleeps,
Man girds at and despises,
But takes himself away by leaps
And bounds when it arises.
Ambat Delaso

DARING, n.
One of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in security.

DAWN, n.
The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

DAY, n.
A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper -- the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.

DEAD, adj.
Done with the work of breathing; done
With all the world; the mad race run
Though to the end; the golden goal
Attained and found to be a hole!
Squatol Johnes


DEBT, n.
An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave- driver.

DEFAME, v.t.
To lie about another. To tell the truth about another.

DEFENCELESS, adj.
Unable to attack.

DEGENERATE, adj.
Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors. The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy; it required ten of them to raise a rock or a riot that one of the heroes of the Trojan war could have raised with ease. Homer never tires of sneering at "men who live in these degenerate days," which is perhaps why they suffered him to beg his bread -- a marked instance of returning good for evil, by the way, for if they had forbidden him he would certainly have starved.

DELIBERATION, n.
The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

DELUGE, n.
A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world.

DENTIST, n.
A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coins out of your pocket.

DEPENDENT, adj.
Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.

DESTINY, n.
A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure.

DIAGNOSIS, n.
A physician's forecast of the disease by the patient's pulse and purse.

DIARY, n.
A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.
Hearst kept a diary wherein were writ
All that he had of wisdom and of wit.
So the Recording Angel, when Hearst died,
Erased all entries of his own and cried:
"I'll judge you by your diary." Said Hearst:
"Thank you; 'twill show you I am Saint the First" --
Straightway producing, jubilant and proud,
That record from a pocket in his shroud.
The Angel slowly turned the pages o'er,
Each stupid line of which he knew before,
Glooming and gleaming as by turns he hit
On Shallow sentiment and stolen wit;
Then gravely closed the book and gave it back.
"My friend, you've wandered from your proper track:
You'd never be content this side the tomb --
For big ideas Heaven has little room,
And Hell's no latitude for making mirth,"
He said, and kicked the fellow back to earth.
"The Mad Philosopher"

DICTATOR, n.
The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.

DICTIONARY, n.
A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

DIE, n.
The singular of "dice." We seldom hear the word, because there is a prohibitory proverb, "Never say die." At long intervals, however, some one says: "The die is cast," which is not true, for it is cut. T

DIGESTION, n.
The conversion of victuals into virtues.

DIPLOMACY, n.
The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

DISCRIMINATE, v.i.
To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.

DISCUSSION, n.
A method of confirming others in their errors.

DISOBEDIENCE, n.
The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.

DISOBEY, v.t.
To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command.

DISTANCE, n.
The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.

DISTRESS, n.
A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.

DRAGOON, n.
A soldier who combines dash and steadiness in so equal measure that he makes his advances on foot and his retreats on horseback.

DUEL, n.
A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance; if awkwardly performed the most unexpected and deplorable consequences sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life in a duel.

DUTY, n.
That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

 

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E

EAVESDROP, v.i.
Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.

ECCENTRICITY, n.
A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

ECONOMY, n.
Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.

EDIBLE, adj.
Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

EDUCATION, n.
That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

EFFECT, n.
The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other -- which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog.

ELECTOR, n.
One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.

ELECTRICITY, n.
The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and good man's career.

ELOQUENCE, n.
The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

ELYSIUM, n.
An imaginary delightful country which the ancients foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good. This ridiculous and mischievous fable was swept off the face of the earth by the early Christians -- may their souls be happy in Heaven!

EMBALM, v.i.
To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew.

EMOTION, n.
A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

ENOUGH, pro.
All there is in the world if you like it.

ENTHUSIASM, n.
A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

ENVELOPE, n.
The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.

EPAULET, n.
An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the enemy -- that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his death would give promotion.

EPITAPH, n.
An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

ERUDITION, n.
Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

ETHNOLOGY, n.
The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.

EULOGY, n.
Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

EXILE, n.
One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.

EXPERIENCE, n.
The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.