THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY, a sardonic partial lexicon of the English language, is perhaps, alongwith a handful of stories, the most enduring work of Ambrose Bierce (1842-ca. 1914), a Civil War veteran who established himself as one of the most influential American journalists of the latter nineteenth century as well as a noted writer of short stories and comic verse. Bierce introduced satirical definitions into his columns in 1875 under the heading ~The Demon's Dictionary"; the present title was used for installments published in periodicals from 1881 until 1906 and was given to the selection reproduced here when it was first published as Volume VII of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce in 1911 (as Bierce mentions in his Preface, written for that volume, a portion of it [comprising the entries for letters A-L] had been published in 1906 under the bowdlerized title The Cynic's Word Book).    

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Born in Ohio in t842, journalist, short-story writer and critic Ambrose Bierce developed into one of this country"s most celebrated and cynical wits--a merciless "American Swift" whose literary barbs were aimed at folly, self-delusion, politics, business, religion, literature and the arts. In this splendid "dictionary" of epigrams, essays, verses and vignettes, you"ll find over 1,000 pointed definitions, e.g. Congratulation ("The civility of envy"), Coward ("One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs") and Historian ("A broad-gauge gossip"). Anyone who likes to laugh will love The Devil"s Dictionary. Anyone looking for a bon mot to enliven their next speech, paper or conversation will have a field day thumbing through what H. L. Mencken called "some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language."

NOTE

PREFACE

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z