Title Page

The Devil’s Dictionary

Condensed Version

by Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-1914)

An Electronic Book from OmniMedia

© Copyright 1994, 1995 by OmniMedia.  Detailed information regarding the copyright and other terms is given in the section entitled Copyright Notice and Terms.

Click HERE for the Table of Contents.

Click HERE  for the Copyright Notice and Terms.

Click HERE for Quick Instructions.

Click HERE if you happen to encounter any error conditions when reading this electronic book.

Revision 1.1:  19 September 1995


Table of Contents

(Click directly on the dark blue text to move to the indicated section.)

Title Page

Copyright Notice and Terms

About the Author and This Electronic Book

Preface by the Author

Begin Reading The Devil’s Dictionary

 (Note:  Definitions D through Z have been protected by SoftLock™.  To read these definitions requires the one-time purchase of a password, unique to your computer.  Details for purchasing the password are given in the window which appears when you attempt to read any of the protected definitions.  You will find the purchase procedure to be very easy and convenient.)

About OmniMedia


Copyright Notice and Terms

This electronic book, “The Devil’s Dictionary – Condensed Version” (the “TITLE”) is © Copyright 1994, 1995 by OmniMedia and is fully protected by United States Copyright laws and international treaty provisions.

Because this electronic book is protected by SoftLock™ software, OmniMedia hereby gives all others permission to electronically duplicate and redistribute this TITLE provided that none of the files associated with the TITLE (see text file ‘devdict.txt’ for a complete list) are omitted and/or altered in any manner.  Some examples of forbidden alterations to this TITLE include the disabling of the SoftLock feature via any means, the distribution of an electronic file produced by capturing or extracting any portion of the text, and distributing to others a printed copy of any portion of the text.

OmniMedia encourages you to distribute this electronic book far and wide (as outlined in the previous paragraph) so that many others can enjoy it.

This TITLE, including all files, installation programs, and documentation, is provided “AS IS”, that is, you use this title at your own risk, without warranty of any kind.  This includes, but is not limited to, defects/errors with the format of this TITLE as well as defects/errors in the media used to distribute this TITLE to the supplier and/or purchaser.  OmniMedia further disclaims all implied warranties including, but not limited to, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

In no event shall OmniMedia, SoftLock Services, Inc., and/or any suppliers of this TITLE be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for lost profits, business interruptions, loss of business information, or any other pecuniary loss) arising from the use of or inability to use the TITLE, even if OmniMedia, SoftLock, and/or the suppliers of this TITLE have been advised of the possibility of such damages.  Because some jurisdictions do not allow exclusions or limitations of liability for consequential or incidental damages, this limitation may not apply to you.

Should you have any further questions about the contents of this section, please contact OmniMedia.

(Note:  Definitions D through Z of this TITLE have been protected by SoftLock™ software.  To read these definitions requires the one-time purchase from SoftLock of a password, unique to your computer.  Details for purchasing the SoftLock password are given in the window which appears when you attempt to read any of the protected definitions.  You will find the purchase procedure to be very easy and convenient.)


About the Author and This Electronic Book

Ambrose Bierce was born on June 24, 1842 in Meigs County, Ohio and was raised in Kosciusko County, Indiana.  Early in his life, he developed a keen interest in writing and journalism.  While in high school, he became a printer’s devil for a newspaper in Warsaw, Indiana.  The onset of the Civil War temporarily interrupted this budding career – in April 1861 he enlisted with the 9th Indiana Volunteers and fought in several Civil War battles, including Shiloh and Chickamauga.  He was seriously wounded on Kenesaw Mountain in 1864 and served until January 1865.  He received a merit promotion to major in 1867.

Returning to civilian life and his interest in writing and journalism, he moved to San Francisco in 1868 and became the editor of the News Letter.  In December 1871 he married Mary Ellen Day, and from 1872 to 1875 they lived in England, where he wrote for several magazines as well as writing several books.  His English friends called him “Bitter Bierce.”

Bierce returned to San Francisco in 1877 to become associate editor of the Argonaut, but left in 1879-80 to seek his fortune (and unsuccessfully so) looking for gold in the Dakota Territory.  Returning to San Francisco, he became the editor for the Wasp.  In 1887, he joined the staff of Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, for which he wrote the “Prattler” column for 10 years.  In 1896, Bierce moved to Washington, D.C., where he continued newspaper and magazine writing.

Tiring of American life, Bierce went to Mexico in 1913, then in the midst of a revolt by Pancho Villa.  His death in 1914 is a mystery, but it is conjectured that he was killed in the siege of Ojinaga in January 1914.

Bierce’s personal life was quite troubled.  He separated from his wife, lost his two sons, and severed many friendships.  As a newspaper columnist, he specialized in critical attacks on amateur poets, clergymen, bores, dishonest politicians, money grabbers, pretenders, and frauds of all sorts.

Bierce’s most famous work, The Devil’s Dictionary, was first published in 1906.  It is a volume of ironic sayings that is best described as the “Cynic’s Bible”, heavily reflecting Bierce’s piercing and cynical wit (see the Preface by the Author).

This hypertext electronic book is a condensed transcription from the 1911 edition of The Devil’s Dictionary.  Out of the nearly 1000 definitions in the original work, 623 were retained here.  These 623 were chosen based on their relevance to readers of today as well as the quality of the humor and wit.  In addition, the poetry and extended explanations in the original work were not included here so as to make each definition short, concise, and to-the-point.

If the reader is interested, the complete version in ASCII text format is freely available on the Internet and other electronic BBS.  For a recent publication containing the full text, as well as further additions, the reader is referred to the following book:

The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?).  Research and editing by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, preface by John Myers Myers, published by Penguin (1984).

OmniMedia

September 19, 1995


Preface by the Author

The Devil’s Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906.  In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic’s Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve.  To quote the publishers of the present work:

“This more reverent title had previously been forced upon him by the religious scruples of the last newspaper in which a part of the work had appeared, with the natural consequence that when it came out in covers the country already had been flooded by its imitators with a score of  ‘cynic’  books – The Cynic’s This, The Cynic’s That, and The Cynic’s t’Other.  Most of these books were merely stupid, though some of them added the distinction of silliness.  Among them, they brought the word ‘cynic’ into disfavor so deep that any book bearing it was discredited in advance of publication.”

Meantime, too, some of the enterprising humorists of the country had helped themselves to such parts of the work as served their needs, and many of its definitions, anecdotes, phrases and so forth, had become more or less current in popular speech.  This explanation is made, not with any pride of priority in trifles, but in simple denial of possible charges of plagiarism, which is no trifle.  In merely resuming his own the author hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed – enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang.

A conspicuous, and it is hope not unpleasant, feature of the book is its abundant illustrative quotations from eminent poets, chief of whom is that learned and ingenious cleric, Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J., whose lines bear his initials.  To Father Jape’s kindly encouragement and assistance the author of the prose text is greatly indebted.

Ambrose Bierce


The Devil’s Dictionary
(Note:  Definitions D through Z have been protected by SoftLock™.  To read these definitions requires the one-time purchase of a password, unique to your computer.  Details for purchasing the password are given in the window which appears when you attempt to read any of the protected definitions.  You will find the purchase procedure to be very easy and convenient.)

A

ABATIS

ABDICATION

ABDOMEN

ABILITY

ABRIDGE

ABRUPT

ABSCOND

ABSENTEE

ABSOLUTE

ABSTAINER

ABSURDITY

ACCIDENT

ACCOMPLICE

ACCORD

ACCORDION

ACCOUNTABILITY

ACCUSE

ACEPHALOUS

ACHIEVEMENT

ACKNOWLEDGE

ACQUAINTANCE

ACTUALLY

ADAGE

ADAMANT

ADDER

ADHERENT

ADMIRAL

ADMIRATION

ADMONITION

ADORE

ADVICE

AFFLICTION

AGE

AGITATOR

AIR

ALDERMAN

ALLIANCE

ALONE

ALTAR

AMBIDEXTROUS

AMBITION

AMNESTY

ANOINT

APHORISM

APOLOGIZE

APOSTATE

APOTHECARY

APPEAL

APPETITE

APPLAUSE

APRIL FOOL

ARCHBISHOP

ARCHITECT

ARDOR

ARENA

ARMOR

ARRAYED

ARREST

ARSENIC

ASPERSE

AUCTIONEER

AUSTRALIA

B

BABY

BACCHUS

BACK

BACKBITE

BAIT

BAROMETER

BARRACK

BASTINADO

BATH

BATTLE

BEARD

BEAUTY

BEFRIEND

BEG

BEGGAR

BELLADONNA

BENEDICTINES

BENEFACTOR

BIGAMY

BIGOT

BIRTH

BODY-SNATCHER

BORE

BOTANY

BOTTLE-NOSED

BOUNDARY

BOUNTY

BRAIN

BRANDY

BRIDE

C

CAABA

CABBAGE

CALAMITY

CALLOUS

CAMEL

CANNIBAL

CANNON

CANONICALS

CAPITAL

CARNIVOROUS

CARTESIAN

CAT

CEMETERY

CENOBITE

CENTAUR

CHILDHOOD

CHRISTIAN

CIRCUS

CLAIRVOYANT

CLARINET

CLERGYMAN

CLOCK

CLOSE-FISTED

COMFORT

COMMENDATION

COMMERCE

COMMONWEALTH

COMPROMISE

COMPULSION

CONDOLE

CONFIDANT

CONGRATULATION

CONGRESS

CONNOISSEUR

CONSERVATIVE

CONSOLATION

CONSUL

CONSULT

CONTEMPT

CONTROVERSY

CONVENT

CONVERSATION

CORONATION

CORPORATION

CORSAIR

COURT FOOL

COWARD

CRAYFISH

CREDITOR

CREMONA

CRITIC

CUPID

CURIOSITY

CYNIC

D

DAMN

DANCE

DARING

DAWN

DAY

DEBAUCHEE

DEBT

DECALOGUE

DECIDE

DEFAME

DEFENSELESS

DEGENERATE

DEGRADATION

DEINOTHERIUM

DELEGATION

DELIBERATION

DELUGE

DELUSION

DENTIST

DEPENDENT

DESTINY

DIAGNOSIS

DIAPHRAGM

DIARY

DICTATOR

DICTIONARY

DIE

DIPLOMACY

DISABUSE

DISCRIMINATE

DISCUSSION

DISOBEDIENCE

DISOBEY

DISTANCE

DISTRESS

DIVINATION

DOG

DRAGOON

DRAMATIST

DUCK-BILL

DUEL

DUTY

E

EAT

EAVESDROP

ECCENTRICITY

ECONOMY

EDIBLE

EDUCATION

EFFECT

EGOTIST

ELECTOR

ELECTRICITY

ELOQUENCE

ELYSIUM

EMANCIPATION

EMBALM

EMOTION

ENOUGH

ENTERTAINMENT

ENTHUSIASM

ENVELOPE

EPAULET

EPICURE

EPITAPH

ERUDITION

ESOTERIC

ETHNOLOGY

EULOGY

EVANGELIST

EXCEPTION

EXCESS

EXECUTIVE

EXHORT

EXILE

EXPERIENCE

EXPOSTULATION

EXTINCTION

F

FAITH

FAMOUS

FASHION

FEAST

FELON

FEMALE

FIB

FIDDLE

FIDELITY

FLAG

FLOP

FOLLY

FORGETFULNESS

FORK

FREEBOOTER

FRIENDLESS

FRIENDSHIP

FROG

FRYING-PAN

FUNERAL

FUTURE

G

GALLOWS

GARGOYLE

GARTER

GENEROUS

GENEALOGY

GEOGRAPHER

GEOLOGY

GHOST

GHOUL

GLUTTON

GOOSE

GOUT

GRACES

GRAMMAR

GRAVE

GRAVITATION

GUILLOTINE

GUNPOWDER

H

HABEAS CORPUS

HABIT

HALO

HAND

HANDKERCHIEF

HAPPINESS

HARANGUE

HARBOR

HARMONISTS

HATCHET

HATRED

HEAD-MONEY

HEARSE

HEATHEN

HEAVEN

HEBREW

HELPMATE

HEMP

HERMIT

HIPPOGRIFF

HISTORIAN

HISTORY

HOMEOPATHIST

HOMEOPATHY

HOMICIDE

HONORABLE

HOSPITALITY

HOUSE

HOUSE OF CORRECTION

HOUSE OF GOD

HOUSE DOG

HOUSE MAID

HOUSELESS

HOVEL

HUMANITY

HURRY

HUSBAND

HYDRA

HYENA

I

IDIOT

IDLENESS

IGNORAMUS

ILLUSTRIOUS

IMAGINATION

IMBECILITY

IMMIGRANT

IMPARTIAL

IMPENITENCE

IMPIETY

IMPOSITION

IMPOSTOR

IMPROVIDENCE

IMPUNITY

INCUBUS

INCUMBENT

INDIFFERENT

INDIGESTION

INDISCRETION

INEXPEDIENT

INFANCY

INFIDEL

INFLUENCE

INGRATE

INJURY

INJUSTICE

INK

INSURANCE

INTERPRETER

INTERREGNUM

INTIMACY

INVENTOR

IRRELIGION

J

JEALOUS

JEWS-HARP

JUSTICE

K

KILL

KILT

KINDNESS

KING

KISS

KLEPTOMANIAC

L

LABOR

LANGUAGE

LAUGHTER

LAWFUL

LAWYER

LEAD

LEARNING

LECTURER

LEXICOGRAPHER

LIAR

LIBERTY

LIFE

LIGHTHOUSE

LIMB

LITIGANT

LITIGATION

LOCK-AND-KEY

LOGIC

LONGEVITY

LOVE

LOW-BRED

LUMINARY

LUNARIAN

LYRE

M

MAD

MAGIC

MAGNET

MAGNETISM

MAGNIFICENT

MAGNITUDE

MAGPIE

MALE

MAMMON

MAN

MANICHEISM

MARRIAGE

MAUSOLEUM

MAYONNAISE

MEEKNESS

MESMERISM

MILLENNIUM

MIND

MINE

MINISTER

MINOR

MIRACLE

MISCREANT

MISFORTUNE

MONDAY

MONEY

MONKEY

MONUMENT

MORE

MOUSE

MOUTH

N

NEIGHBOR

NEPOTISM

NEWTONIAN

NIHILIST

NIRVANA

NOMINEE

NON-COMBATANT

NOSE

NOUMENON

NOVEL

NOVEMBER

O

OATH

OBSERVATORY

OCEAN

OFFENSIVE

OMEN

ONCE

OPIATE

OPPORTUNITY

OPPOSE

OPPOSITION

OPTIMISM

OPTIMIST

ORATORY

OTHERWISE

OUTCOME

OUTDO

OUT-OF-DOORS

OVEREAT

OVERWORK

P

PAINTING

PANTHEISM

PARDON

PASSPORT

PATIENCE

PEACE

PEDIGREE

PENITENT

PERFECTION

PERORATION

PERSEVERANCE

PESSIMISM

PHILANTHROPIST

PHILOSOPHY

PHONOGRAPH

PHOTOGRAPH

PHRENOLOGY

PHYSICIAN

PHYSIOGNOMY

PICTURE

PIE

PIETY

PIG

PILGRIM

PILLORY

PITY

PLAGIARISM

PLAGIARIZE

PLAN

PLATONIC

PLEASE

PLEASURE

PLEBISCITE

PLEONASM

PLOW

PLUNDER

POCKET

POETRY

POLITENESS

POLITICS

POLITICIAN

POLYGAMY

POPULIST

PORTUGUESE

POSITIVE

POSITIVISM

POVERTY

PRAY

PRE-ADAMITE

PRECEDENT

PREDICAMENT

PREDILECTION

PRE-EXISTENCE

PREFERENCE

PREHISTORIC

PREJUDICE

PREROGATIVE

PRESBYTERIAN

PRESCRIPTION

PRESENT

PRESIDE

PRESIDENCY

PRESIDENT

PRICE

PRIMATE

PROBOSCIS

PROJECTILE

PROOF

PROOF-READER

PROPERTY

PROPHECY

PROVIDENTIAL

PUSH

PYRRHONISM

Q

QUEEN

QUILL

QUIVER

QUORUM

QUOTATION

QUOTIENT

R

RABBLE

RACK

RADICALISM

RAILROAD

RANSOM

RAPACITY

RAREBIT

RASCAL

RASCALITY

RASH

RATIONAL

REACH

REALISM

REALITY

REALLY

REAR

REASONABLE

REBEL

RECOLLECT

RECONCILIATION

RECONSIDER

RECRUIT

REDRESS

REFERENDUM

REFLECTION

REFORM

REGALIA

RELIGION

RELIQUARY

RENOWN

REPARATION

REPARTEE

REPENTANCE

REPLICA

REPORTER

REPRESENTATIVE

REPROBATION

RESIDENT

RESIGN

RESOLUTE

RESPECTABILITY

RESPLENDENT

RESPONSIBILITY

RESTITUTIONS

RESTITUTOR

RETRIBUTION

REVEILLE

REVELATION

REVERENCE

REVOLUTION

RICH

RIDICULE

RIGHT

RIOT

R.I.P.

RITE

ROAD

ROBBER

ROPE

RUM

RUMOR

S

SABBATH

SAINT

SATIRE

SAW

SELF-ESTEEM

SELF-EVIDENT

SELFISH

SENATE

SLANG

SORCERY

SUCCESS

T

TABLE D’HOTE

TAKE

TALK

TECHNICALITY

TELEPHONE

TELESCOPE

THEOSOPHY

TREE

TRIAL

TRICHINOSIS

TRUCE

TRUTH

TRUTHFUL

TURKEY

TWICE

TYPE

TSETSE FLY

U

UGLINESS

ULTIMATUM

UN-AMERICAN

UNDERSTANDING

UNITARIAN

UNIVERSALIST

URBANITY

V

VALOR

VANITY

VIRTUES

VOTE

W

WALL STREET

WAR

WEDDING

WHEAT

WHITE

WIT

WOMAN

WORMS’-MEAT

WRATH

X

Y

YEAR

YESTERDAY

YOKE

YOUTH

Z

ZEAL

ZOOLOGY


Abatis
Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.


Abdication
An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.


Abdomen
The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage.


Ability
The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones.  In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.  Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised;  it is no easy task to be solemn.


Abridge
To shorten.


Abrupt
Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it.


Abscond
To “move in a mysterious way,” commonly with the property of another.


Absentee
A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.


Absolute
Independent, irresponsible.  An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.  Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign’s power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.


Abstainer
A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.  A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.


Absurdity
A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.


Accident
An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.


Accomplice
One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty.


Accord
Harmony.


Accordion
An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.


Accountability
The mother of caution.


Accuse
To affirm another’s guilt or unworth;  most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.


Acephalous
In the surprising condition of the Crusader who absently pulled at his forelock some hours after a Saracen scimitar had, unconsciously to him, passed through his neck, as related by de Joinville.


Achievement
The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.


Acknowledge
To confess.  Acknowledgment of one another’s faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.


Acquaintance
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
Perhaps;  possibly.


Adage
Boned wisdom for weak teeth.


Adamant
A mineral frequently found beneath a corset.  Soluble in solicitate of gold.


Adder
A species of snake.  So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.


Adherent
A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.


Admiral
That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.


Admiration
Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.


Admonition
Gentle reproof, as with a meat-ax.  Friendly warning.


Adore
To venerate expectantly.


Advice
The smallest current coin.


Affliction
An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.


Age
That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the enterprise to commit.


Agitator
A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors – to dislodge the worms.


Air
A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.


Alderman
An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretense of open marauding.


Alliance
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.


Alone
In bad company.


Altar
The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods.  The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female tool.


Ambidextrous
Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.


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


Amnesty
The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.


Anoint
To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.


Aphorism
Predigested wisdom.


Apologize
To lay the foundation for a future offense.


Apostate
A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.


Apothecary
The physician’s accomplice, undertaker’s benefactor and grave worm’s provider.


Appeal
In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.


Appetite
An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.


Applause
The echo of a platitude.


April Fool
The March fool with another month added to his folly.


Archbishop
An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.


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


Ardor
The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.


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


Armor
The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.


Arrayed
Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged to a lamppost.


Arrest
Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.


Arsenic
A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.


Asperse
Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.


Auctioneer
The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.


Australia
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.


Baby
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
A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.


Back
That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.


Backbite
To speak of a man as you find him when he can’t find you.


Bait
A preparation that renders the hook more palatable.  The best kind is beauty.


Barometer
An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.


Barrack
A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.


Bastinado
The act of walking on wood without exertion.


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


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


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


Beauty
The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.


Befriend
To make an ingrate.


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


Beggar
One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.


Belladonna
In Italian a beautiful lady;  in English a deadly poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.


Benedictines
An order of monks otherwise known as black friars.


Benefactor
One who makes heavy purchases of ingratitude, without, however, materially affecting the price, which is still within the means of all.


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


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


Birth
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.


Body-snatcher
A robber of grave-worms.  One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker.


Bore
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.


Botany
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
Having a nose created in the image of its maker.


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


Bounty
The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can.


Brain
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.  In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.


Brandy
A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan.  Dose, a headful all the time.  Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of heroes.  Only a hero will venture to drink it.


Bride
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.


Caaba
A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca.  The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.


Cabbage
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.

The cabbage is so called from Cabagius, a prince who on ascending the throne issued a decree appointing a High Council of Empire consisting of the members of his predecessor’s Ministry and the cabbages in the royal garden.  When any of his Majesty’s measures of state policy miscarried conspicuously it was gravely announced that several members of the High Council had been beheaded, and his murmuring subjects were appeased.


Calamity
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
Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.


Camel
 CAMEL, n.  A quadruped (the Splaypes humpidorsus) of great value to the show business.  There are two kinds of camels – the camel proper and the camel improper.  It is the latter that is always exhibited.


Cannibal
A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.


Cannon
An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.


Canonicals
The motley worn by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.


Capital
The seat of misgovernment.


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


Cartesian
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
A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.


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


Cenobite
A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness;  and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.


Centaur
One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, “Every man his own horse.”


Childhood
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.


Christian
One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.  One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.


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


Clairvoyant
A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead.


Clarinet
An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears.  There are two instruments that are worse than a clarinet – two clarinets.


Clergyman
A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method to better his temporal ones.


Clock
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.


Close-fisted
Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious persons wish to obtain.


Comfort
A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor’s uneasiness.


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


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


Compromise
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
The eloquence of power.


Condole
To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.


Confidant
One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided by him to C.


Congratulation
The civility of envy.


Congress
A body of men who meet to repeal laws.


Connoisseur
A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.


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


Consolation
The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.


Consul
In American politics, a person who having failed to secure and office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.


Consult
To seek another’s disapproval of a course already decided on.


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


Controversy
A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.


Convent
A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness.


Conversation
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
The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown sky-high with a dynamite bomb.


Corporation
An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.


Corsair
A politician of the seas.


Court Fool
The plaintiff.


Coward
One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.


Crayfish
A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.


Creditor
One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.


Cremona
A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.


Critic
A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.


Cupid
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
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.


Cynic
A person whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.


Damn
A word formerly much used by the Paphlagonians, the meaning of which is lost.  By the learned Dr. Dolabelly Gak it is believed to have been a term of satisfaction, implying the highest possible degree of mental tranquillity.  Professor Groke, on the contrary, thinks it expressed an emotion of tumultuous delight, because it so frequently occurs in combination with the word jod or god, meaning “joy.”


Dance
To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor’s wife or daughter.  There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common;  they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.


Daring
One of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in security.


Dawn
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
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.


Debauchee
One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had the misfortune to overtake it.


Debt
An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave driver.


Decalogue
A series of commandments, ten in number – just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice.


Decide
To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.


Defame
To lie about another.  To tell the truth about another.


Defenseless
Unable to attack.


Degenerate
Less conspicuously admirable than one’s ancestors.


Degradation
One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.


Deinotherium
An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion.  The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O’Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed.


Delegation
In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes in sets.


Deliberation
The act of examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on.


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


Delusion
The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.


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


Dependent
Reliant upon another’s generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.


Destiny
A tyrant’s authority for crime and fool’s excuse for failure.


Diagnosis
A physician’s forecast of the disease by the patient’s pulse and purse.


Diaphragm
A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from disorders of the bowels.


Diary
A daily record of that part of one’s life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.


Dictator
The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.


Dictionary
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
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.


Diplomacy
The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.


Disabuse
To present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.


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


Discussion
A method of confirming others in their errors.


Disobedience
The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.


Disobey
To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command.


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


Distress
A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.


Divination
The art of nosing out the occult.  Divination is of as many kinds as there are fruit-bearing varieties of the flowering dunce and the early fool.


Dog
A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship.


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


Dramatist
One who adapts plays from the French.


Duck-bill
Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back season.


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


Eat
To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.


Eavesdrop
Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.


Eccentricity
A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.


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


Edible
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
That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.


Effect
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.


Egotist
A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.


Elector
One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man’s choice.


Electricity
The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.


Eloquence
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
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!


Emancipation
A bondman’s change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself.


Embalm
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 meager crew.  The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbor’s lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility.  We shall get him after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose are languishing for a nibble at his gluteous maximus.


Emotion
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
All there is in the world if you like it.


Entertainment
Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of death by injection.


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


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


Epaulet
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.


Epicure
An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification from the senses.


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


Erudition
Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.


Esoteric
Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult.  The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, – exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand.  It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.


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


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


Evangelist
A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.


Exception
A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.


Excess
In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate penalties the law of moderation.


Executive
An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect.


Exhort
In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.


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


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


Expostulation
One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.


Extinction
The raw material out of which theology created the future state.


Faith
Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.


Famous
Conspicuously miserable.


Fashion
A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.


Feast
A festival.  A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.  In the Roman Catholic Church feasts are “movable” and “immovable,” but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until they are full.


Felon
A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.


Female
One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.


Fib
A lie that has not cut its teeth.  An habitual liar’s nearest approach to truth;  the perigee of his eccentric orbit.


Fiddle
An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.


Fidelity
A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.


Flag
A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships.  It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees at vacant lots in London:  “Rubbish may be shot here.”


Flop
Suddenly to change one’s opinions and go over to another party.  The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticized as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.


Folly
That “gift and faculty divine” whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.


Forgetfulness
A gift of God bestowed upon doctors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.


Fork
An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.


Freebooter
A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.


Friendless
Having no favors to bestow.  Destitute of fortune.  Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.


Friendship
A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.


Frog
A reptile with edible legs.


Frying-pan
One part of the penal apparatus employed in that punitive institution, a woman’s kitchen.


Funeral
A pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.


Future
That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.


Gallows
A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is translated to heaven.  In this country the gallows is chiefly remarkable for the number of persons who escape it.


Gargoyle
A rain-spout projecting from the eaves of mediaeval buildings, commonly fashioned into a grotesque caricature of some personal enemy of the architect or owner of the building.


Garter
An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country.


Generous
Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons.  It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.


Genealogy
An account of one’s descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.


Geographer
A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.


Geology
The science of the earth’s crust – to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well.  The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus:  The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners’ tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors.  The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles.  The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, moldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.


Ghost
The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.


Ghoul
A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring the dead.


Glutton
A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.


Goose
A bird that supplies quills for writing.  These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird’s intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an “author,” there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl’s thought and feeling.  The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable;  many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.


Gout
A physician’s name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.


Graces
Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary.  They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing.


Grammar
A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.


Grave
A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.


Gravitation
The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportional to the quantity of matter they contain – the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another.


Guillotine
A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.


Gunpowder
An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted.


Habeas Corpus
A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.


Habit
A shackle for the free.


Halo
Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with “aureola,” or “nimbus,” a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints.


Hand
A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.


Handkerchief
A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears.  The handkerchief is of recent invention;  our ancestors knew nothing of it and entrusted its duties to the sleeve.


Happiness
An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.


Harangue
A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harrangue-outang.


Harbor
A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to the fury of the customs.


Harmonists
A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.


Hatchet
A young ax, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.


Hatred
A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another’s superiority.


Head-money
A capitation tax, or poll-tax.


Hearse
Death’s baby-carriage.


Heathen
A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.


Heaven
A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.


Hebrew
A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation.


Helpmate
A wife, or bitter half.


Hemp
A plant from whose fibrous bark is made an article of neckwear which is frequently put on after public speaking in the open air and prevents the wearer from taking cold.


Hermit
A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.


Hippogriff
An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.  The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.  The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of zoology is full of surprises.


Historian
A broad-gauge gossip.


History
An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.


Homeopathist
The humorist of the medical profession.


Homeopathy
A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science.  To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.


Homicide
The slaying of one human being by another.  There are four kinds of homicide;  felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another – the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.


Honorable
Afflicted with an impediment in one’s reach.  In legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as honorable;  as, “the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.”


Hospitality
The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.


House
A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe.


House of Correction
A place of reward for political and personal service.


House of God
A building with a steeple and a mortgage on it.


House dog
A pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult persons passing by and appall the hardy visitor.


House maid
A younger person of the opposite sex employed to be variously disagreeable and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has pleased God to place her.


Houseless
Having paid all taxes on household goods.


Hovel
The fruit of a flower called the Palace.


Humanity
The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.


Hurry
The dispatch of bunglers.


Husband
One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.


Hydra
A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.


Hyena
A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead.  But the medical student does that.


Idiot
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.  The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.”  He has the last word in everything;  his decision is unappealable.  He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.


Idleness
A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.


Ignoramus
A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.


Illustrious
Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction.


Imagination
A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.


Imbecility
A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary.


Immigrant
An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.


Impartial
Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions.


Impenitence
A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.


Impiety
Your irreverence toward my deity.


Imposition
The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on of hands – a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.


Impostor
A rival aspirant to public honors.


Improvidence
Provision for the needs of today from the revenues of tomorrow.


Impunity
Wealth.


Incubus
One of a race of highly improper demons who, though probably not wholly extinct, may be said to have seen their best nights.


Incumbent
A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.


Indifferent
Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.


Indigestion
A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind.


Indiscretion
The guilt of woman.


Inexpedient
Not calculated to advance one’s interests.


Infancy
The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, “Heaven lies about us.”  The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.


Infidel
In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion;  in Constantinople, one who does.


Influence
In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a substantial quid.


Ingrate
One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity.


Injury
An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight.


Injustice
A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.


Ink
A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.  The properties of ink are peculiar and contradictory;  it may be used to make reputations and unmake them;  to blacken them and to make them white;  but it is most generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal quality of the material.  There are men called journalists who have established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others to get out of.  Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid to get in pays twice as much to get out.


Insurance
An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.


Interpreter
One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter’s advantage for the other to have said.


Interregnum
The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne.  The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again.


Intimacy
A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.


Inventor
A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.


Irreligion
The principal one of the great faiths of the world.


Jealous
Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.


Jews-harp
An unmusical instrument, played by holding it fast with the teeth and trying to brush it away with the finger.


Justice
A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.


Kill
To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.


Kilt
A costume sometimes worn by Scotsmen in America and Americans in Scotland.


Kindness
A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.


King
A male person commonly known in America as a “crowned head,” although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.


Kiss
A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for “bliss.”  It is supposed to signify, in a general way, some kind of rite or ceremony appertaining to a good understanding;  but the manner of its performance is unknown to this lexicographer.


Kleptomaniac
A rich thief.


Labor
One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.


Language
The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.


Laughter
An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises.  It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.


Lawful
Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.


Lawyer
One skilled in circumvention of the law.


Lead
A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers – particularly to those who love not wisely but other men’s wives.  Lead is also of great service as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way.  An interesting fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.


Learning
The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.


Lecturer
One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.


Lexicographer
A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.


Liar
A lawyer with a roving commission.


Liberty
One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.


Life
A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.  We live in daily apprehension of its loss;  yet when lost it is not missed.


Lighthouse
A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.


Limb
The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.


Litigant
A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.


Litigation
A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.


Lock-and-key
The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment.


Logic
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.


Longevity
Uncommon extension of the fear of death.


Love
A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.


Low-bred
“Raised” instead of brought up.


Luminary
One who throws light upon a subject;  as an editor by not writing about it.


Lunarian
An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits.


Lyre
An ancient instrument of torture.


Mad
Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence;  not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves;  at odds with the majority;  in short, unusual.  It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.


Magic
An art of converting superstition into coin.


Magnet
Something acted upon by magnetism (see MAGNETISM).


Magnetism
Something acting upon a magnet (see MAGNET).


Magnificent
Having a grandeur or splendor superior to that to which the spectator is accustomed, as the ears of an ass to a rabbit, or the glory of a glowworm to a maggot.


Magnitude
Size.  Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is large and nothing small.  If everything in the universe were increased in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been.


Magpie
A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.


Male
A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex.  The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man.  The genus has two varieties;  good providers and bad providers.


Mammon
The god of the world’s leading religion.


Man
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks that he is apt to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.


Manicheism
The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil.  When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.


Marriage
The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.


Mausoleum
The final and funniest folly of the rich.


Mayonnaise
One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.


Meekness
Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.


Mesmerism
Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner.


Millennium
The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be screwed down, with all reformers on the under side.


Mind
A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.  Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.


Mine
Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.


Minister
An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility.


Minor
Less objectionable.


Miracle
An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.


Miscreant
A person of the highest degree of unworth.  Etymologically, the word means unbeliever, and its present signification may be regarded as theology’s noblest contribution to the development of our language.


Misfortune
The kind of fortune that never misses.


Monday
In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.


Money
A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.


Monkey
An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.


Monument
A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.


More
The comparative degree of too much.


Mouse
An animal which strews its path with fainting women.


Mouth
In man, the gateway to the soul;  in woman, the outlet of the heart.


Neighbor
One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.


Nepotism
NEPOTISM, n.  Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.


Newtonian
Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why.  His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.


Nihilist
A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi.  The leader of the school is Tolstoi.


Nirvana
In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.


Nominee
A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.


Non-combatant
A dead Quaker.


Nose
The extreme outpost of the face.


Noumenon
That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon.  The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate;  it can be apprehended only be a process of reasoning – which is a phenomenon.


Novel
A short story padded.


November
The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.


Oath
In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.


Observatory
A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.


Ocean
A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.


Offensive
Generating disagreeable emotions or sensations, as the advance of an army against its enemy.


Omen
A sign that something will happen if nothing happens.


Once
Enough.


Opiate
An unlocked door in the prison of Identity.  It leads into the jail yard.


Opportunity
A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.


Oppose
To assist with obstructions and objections.


Opposition
In politics the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.


Optimism
The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong.


Optimist
A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.


Oratory
A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding.


Otherwise
No better.


Outcome
A particular type of disappointment.


Outdo
To make an enemy.


Out-of-doors
That part of one’s environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes.


Overeat
To dine.


Overwork
A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.


Painting
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.


Pantheism
The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.


Pardon
To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime.


Passport
A document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special reprobation and outrage.


Patience
A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.


Peace
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.


Pedigree
The known part of the route from an arboreal ancestor with a swim bladder to an urban descendant with a cigarette.


Penitent
Undergoing or awaiting punishment.


Perfection
An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence;  an attribute of the critic.


Peroration
The explosion of an oratorical rocket.  It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.


Perseverance
A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.


Pessimism
A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.


Philanthropist
A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.


Philosophy
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.


Phonograph
An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.


Photograph
A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.


Phrenology
The science of picking the pocket through the scalp.  It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.


Physician
One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.


Physiognomy
The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.


Picture
A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome in three.


Pie
An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.


Piety
Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.


Pig
An animal (Porcus omnivorus) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.


Pilgrim
A traveler that is taken seriously.


Pillory
A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction.


Pity
A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.


Plagiarism
A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.


Plagiarize
To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never read.


Plan
To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.


Platonic
Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates.


Please
To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.


Pleasure
The least hateful form of dejection.


Plebiscite
A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.


Pleonasm
An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.


Plow
An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the pen.


Plunder
To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft.


Pocket
The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience.


Poetry
A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.


Politeness
The most acceptable hypocrisy.


Politics
A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.  The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.


Politician
An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared.  When we wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.  As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.


Polygamy
A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which has but one.


Populist
A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas.


Portuguese
A species of geese indigenous to Portugal.


Positive
Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.


Positivism
A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent.


Poverty
A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform.  The number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about it.  Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.


Pray
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.


Pre-Adamite
One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily conceived.  Melsius believed them to have inhabited “the Void” and to have been something intermediate between fishes and birds.  Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.


Precedent
In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases.


Predicament
The wage of consistency.


Predilection
The preparatory stage of disillusion.


Pre-existence
An unnoted factor in creation.


Preference
A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die.  “Because,” he replied, “death is no better than life.”


Prehistoric
Belonging to an early period and a museum.


Prejudice
A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.


Prerogative
A sovereign’s right to do wrong.


Presbyterian
One who holds the conviction that the government authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.


Prescription
A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.


Present
That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.


Preside
To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable result.  In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument;  as, “He presided at the piccolo.”


Presidency
The greased pig in the field game of American politics.


President
The leading figure in a small group of men of whom – and of whom only – it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.


Price
Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.


Primate
The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions.  The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead.  He is commonly dead.


Proboscis
The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.


Projectile
The final arbiter in international disputes.


Proof
Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of unlikelihood.  The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to that of only one.


Proof-reader
A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.


Property
Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B.


Prophecy
The art and practice of selling one’s credibility for future delivery.


Providential
Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.


Push
One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics.  The other is Pull.


Pyrrhonism
An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor.  It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism.


Queen
A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.


Quill
An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass.  This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence.


Quiver
A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.


Quorum
A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it.  In the United States Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House;  in the House of Representatives, of the Speaker and the Devil.


Quotation
The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.  The words erroneously repeated.


Quotient
A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another – usually about as many times as it can be got there.


Rabble
In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections.  The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable – omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.


Rack
An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth.  As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.


Radicalism
The conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today.


Railroad
The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off.


Ransom
The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller, nor can belong to the buyer.


Rapacity
Providence without industry.  The thrift of power.


Rarebit
A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit.  To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau a la financiere is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.


Rascal
A fool considered under another aspect.


Rascality
Stupidity militant.


Rash
Insensible to the value of our advice.


Rational
Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.


Reach
The radius of action of the human hand, the area within which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the propensity to provide.


Realism
The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.  The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.


Reality
The dream of a mad philosopher.  That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom.  The nucleus of a vacuum.


Really
Apparently.


Rear
In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress.


Reasonable
Accessible to the infection of our own opinions.  Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.


Rebel
A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.


Recollect
To recall with additions something not previously known.


Reconciliation
A suspension of hostilities.  An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.


Reconsider
To seek a justification for a decision already made.


Recruit
A person distinguishable from a civilian by his uniform and from a soldier by his gait.


Redress
Reparation without satisfaction.


Referendum
A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.


Reflection
An action of the mind whereby we obtain a clearer view of our relation to the things of yesterday and are able to avoid the perils that we shall not again encounter.


Reform
A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation.


Regalia
To return to the Devil’s Dictionary, click on the ‘Back’ button in the Toolbar above.

REGALIA.  Distinguishing insignia, jewels and costume of such ancient and honorable orders:

Visionaries of Detectable Bosh

Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes

League of Holy Humbug

Golden Phalanx of Phalangers

Genteel Society of Expurgated Hoodlums

Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians

Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog

Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff

Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon

Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters

Sublime Legion of Flamboyant Conspicuants

Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine

Shining Inaccessibles

Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip

Jannissaries of the Broad-Blown Peacock

Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians

Associated Deities of the Butter Trade

Affectionate Fraternity of Men Similarly Warted

Cooperative Association for Breaking Into the Spotlight

Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith

Knights-Champions of the Domestic Dog

Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs

Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool

Society for Prevention of Prevalence

Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll

Uniformed Rank of Lousy Cats

To return to the Devil’s Dictionary, click on the ‘Back’ button in the Toolbar above.


Religion
A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.


Reliquary
A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam’s ass, the lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth.  Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable times.  A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once escaped during a sermon in St. Peter’s and so tickled the noses of the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three times each.  It is related in the “Gesta Sanctorum” that a sacristan in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of St. Dennis in the library.  Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was seeking a body of doctrine.  This unseemly levity so raged the diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the Stour and replaced by another head of St. Dennis, brought from Rome.


Renown
A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame – a little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable than the other.


Reparation
Satisfaction that is made for a wrong and deducted from the satisfaction felt in committing it.


Repartee
Prudent insult in retort.


Repentance
The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment.  It is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not inconsistent with continuity of sin.


Replica
A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original.  It is so called to distinguish it from a “copy,” which is made by another artist.  When the two are made with equal skill the replica is the more valuable, for it is supposed to be more beautiful than it looks.


Reporter
A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.


Representative
In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.


Reprobation
In theology, the state of a luckless mortal prenatally damned.  The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin, whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are predestined to salvation.


Resident
Unable to leave.


Resign
To renounce an honor for an advantage.  To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage.


Resolute
Obstinate in a course that we approve.


Respectability
The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.


Resplendent
Like a simple American citizen beduking himself in his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an elemental unit of a parade.


Responsibility
A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor.  In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.


Restitutions
The founding or endowing of universities and public libraries by gift or bequest.


Restitutor
Benefactor;  philanthropist.


Retribution
A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.


Reveille
A signal to sleeping soldiers to dream of battlefields no more, but get up and have their blue noses counted.


Revelation
A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew.  The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.


Reverence
The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.


Revolution
In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.


Rich
Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.


Ridicule
Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.


Right
Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have;  as the right to be a king, the right to do one’s neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.


Riot
A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.


R.I.P.
A careless abbreviation of requiescat in pace, attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead.  According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than reductus in pulvis.


Rite
A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.


Road
A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.


Robber
A candid man of affairs.


Rope
An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal.


Rum
Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.


Rumor
A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.


Sabbath
A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.


Saint
A dead sinner revised and edited.


Satire
An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.


Saw
A trite popular saying, or proverb.  So called because it makes its way into a wooden head.


Self-esteem
An erroneous appraisement.


Self-evident
Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.


Selfish
Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.


Senate
A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.


Slang
SLANG, n.  The grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis) with an audible memory.  The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot.  A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.


Sorcery
The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence.


Success
The one unpardonable sin against one’s fellows.


Table D’Hote
A caterer’s thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.


Take
To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.


Talk
To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.


Technicality
In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder.  His exact words were;  “Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder.”  The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.


Telephone
An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.


Telescope
A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details.  Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.


Theosophy
An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.


Tree
A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal apparatus, though through a miscarriage of justice most trees bear only a negligible fruit, or none at all.


Trial
A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.


Trichinosis
The pig’s reply to proponents of porcophagy.


Truce
Friendship.


Truth
An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.  Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.


Truthful
Dumb and illiterate.


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


Twice
Once too often.


Type
Pestilent bits of metal suspected of destroying civilization and enlightenment, despite their obvious agency in this incomparable dictionary.


Tsetse fly
An African insect (Glossina morsitans) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature’s most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (Mendax interminabilis).


Ugliness
A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.


Ultimatum
In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.


Un-American
Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.


Understanding
A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house.  Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.


Unitarian
One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.


Universalist
One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith.


Urbanity
The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York.


Valor
A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s hope.


Vanity
The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.


Virtues
Certain abstentions.


Vote
The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.


Wall Street
A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke.


War
A by-product of the arts of peace.


Wedding
A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.


Wheat
A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.  The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.


White
Black.


Wit
The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.


Woman
An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.


Worms’-meat
The finished product of which we are the raw material.


Wrath
Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions.


Year
A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.


Yesterday
The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.


Yoke
A word that defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy.


Youth
The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.


Zeal
A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.


Zoology
The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta).


Brief Instructions to the User
Using this electronic book is intuitive and very easy!  If you are unfamiliar with the WinHelp format, read “How to Use Help” from the “Help” menu item above.  Of course, you may learn much of what you need to know by simply experimenting with the toolbar buttons and menu commands.

Some useful features of this electronic book include placing a Bookmark (so you can return to the same place at a later time), and Annotate (adding notes and comments).  Refer to “How to Use Help” for further information.

One powerful capability of this electronic book is hypertext.  Hypertext is simply text (or a button) which has been linked to some other part of the electronic book.  Clicking on hypertext will move you to the text it is linked to, either as a pop-up, like this window, or as a topic jump.  To verify if text is hypertext, the mouse pointer will switch from an arrow to a small hand with a pointing finger when placed on top of hypertext.

To leave this and any other pop-up window and return to where you were before, simply click on your mouse.


About OmniMedia
OmniMedia is devoted to producing only the highest quality electronic books.  For more information or advice about this electronic book and other offerings from OmniMedia, contact

OmniMedia

9671 South 1600 West Street

South Jordan, UT 84095

(801) 253-4037;  fax (801) 253-4036 (not always online)

Internet:  omnimedia@netcom.com

OmniMedia’s bookstore on the World Wide Web is at

http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia

The FTP Archive is located at

ftp.awa.com  /pub/softlock/pc/products/OmniMedia


About OmniMedia
[Click on the BACK button above to leave this topic.]

OmniMedia

OmniMedia is devoted to producing only the highest quality electronic books.  For more information or advice about this electronic book and other offerings from OmniMedia, contact

OmniMedia

9671 South 1600 West Street

South Jordan, UT 84095

(801) 253-4037;  fax (801) 253-4036 (not always online)

Internet:  omnimedia@netcom.com

OmniMedia’s bookstore on the World Wide Web is at

http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia

The FTP Archive is located at

ftp.awa.com  /pub/softlock/pc/products/OmniMedia

[Click on the BACK button above to leave this topic.]


In Case of Errors
Much effort has been expended into making this electronic book error-free.  But despite this effort, various types of error conditions might still occur.

If any type of error/warning message occurs while reading this electronic book, first check to see if you have all the required files, either in the same directory as this WinHelp file, or in the Windows’ directory path.  The critical files you need to properly read and unlock this electronic book include softlock.dll, vbrun300.dll, and slpw-win.exe (the file slpwinfo.seq should also be there, but it is less critical than the others.)  If any of these files are corrupted or missing, you can retrieve a fresh and up-to-date copy of this electronic book, which includes these files, as well as other valuable information, from OmniMedia’s Internet archives (see the OmniMedia information topic for specific Web/ftp addresses.)

Some error conditions may also occur due to a lack of memory.  If you suspect this is the case, close other running Windows’ applications.

OmniMedia would like your feedback if you see any typographical errors in this electronic book.


Locked Topic

The Selected Definition is SoftLocked

You can’t read this definition (nor all definitions D through Z) until you purchase a password from SoftLock (see the Password Registration Window, PRW, for details).  Once your SoftLock password is entered in the PRW, all locked chapters in this electronic book will be unlocked and this “nag” window will not reappear unless the password becomes invalid (fully explained in the PRW).

If you decide to purchase a password, be sure to write down or print out the password, the product number, and the SoftLockID (again see the PRW), and keep this information in a safe place.

Click HERE (once) to go to the Password Registration Window (be patient as it may take several seconds for that window to appear)

Click HERE to return to where you were in the text without registering


Thank You!

Thank you for registering The Devil’s Dictionary – Condensed Version.  We’re sure you’ll enjoy it.

If you have any problems with the SoftLock password (for example, the password becomes invalid or you accidentally delete the file softlock.ini from your Windows directory without having written down the password), contact SoftLock at (800) 763-8562, or send e-mail to slcustomerserv@softlock.com.  Be sure to have ready all the information you provided SoftLock when you first registered.

For any other technical problems with this electronic book, please contact OmniMedia.

Click HERE to return to where you were in the text before registering


Registration Program Error

An error has occurred while attempting to register this electronic book.

Please make sure the files slpw-win, slpwinfo.seq, softlock.dll and vbrun300.dll are in the same directory as this electronic book file  (note: the *.dll files could also be placed into the windows\ or windows\system directory.)

If any of these files are missing, you need to download a new copy of this e-book from OmniMedia’s archive (see the OmniMedia information topic for more information).

If these files are properly in place, and you still get this error message, then the problem could be a lack of memory—close all other running Windows’ applications and retry registering.

Click HERE to return to where you were in the text before attempting to register