Ambrose Bierce: from The Devil's Dictionary (A - J)

abatis - embarrassing circumstances placed outside a fort in order to augment the coy reluctance of the enemy.
or
abatis - rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.

abide - to treat with merited indifference the landlord's notification that he has let his house to a party willing to pay.

abridge - to shorten ("When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Oliver Cromwell)

Ace - the one-fourth part of the Hand of Fate.

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 Joineville.

adamant - a mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.

Adam's Apple - a protuberance in the throat of man, thoughtfully provided by Nature to keep the rope in place.

adder - a species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.

address - the place at which one receives the delicate attention of creditors.

adipose - fat, ragged and saucy.

admiration - our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

advice - the smallest current coin.

"The man was in such deep distress,"
Said Tom, "that I could do no less
Than give him good advice." Said Jim:
"If less could have been done for him
I know you well enough, my son,
To know that's what you would have done." (Jebel Jocordy)

affectionate - addicted to being a nuisance. The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.

affiance'ed - fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.

affirm - to declare with suspicious gravity when one is not compelled to wholly discredit himself with an oath.

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

ambrosia - the diet of the gods - the modern peanut.

aphorism - predigested wisdom.

The flabby wine-skin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism. ("The Mad Philosopher", 1697)

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 labour question.

ardor - the quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

He loved her with an ardor -
Such a hot one,
That her father had to guard her
With a shotgun. (Ovid)

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.

arrest - formally to detain one accused of unusualness (e.g. "God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh." - The Unauthorized Version)

bard - a person who makes rhymes. The word is one of the numerous aliases under which the poet seeks to veil his identity and escape opprobrium.

beggar - a pest unkindly inflicted upon the suffering rich.

betrothed - the condition of a man and woman who, pleasing to one another and objectionable to their friends, are anxious to propitiate society by becoming unendurable to each other.

book-learning - the dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impenitent ignorance.

bride - a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

cab - a tormenting vehicle in which a pirate jolts you through devious ways to the wrong place, and then robs you.

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

child - an accident to the occurence of which all the forces and arrangements of nature are specially devised and accurately adapted.

dandle - to set an unresisting child upon one's knee and jolt its teeth loose in a transport of affection.

Deist - one who believes in God, but reserves the right to worship the Devil.

dejeuner - the breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.

deliberation - the act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

demure - grave and modest-mannered, like a particularly unscrupulous woman.

There was a young maid so demure,
That she fooled all the men who knew her;
But the women they smoked her
And took her and choked her
And chucked her into a sewer. (Milton)

deposit - a charitable contribution to the support of a bank.

descendant - any person proceeding from an ancestor in any degree.

Alas for the days when my baboon ancestral
In Japanese woods from the lithe limb was pendant,
Instructing, kind hearted, each babooness vestal
How best to achieve for herself a descendant. (Oscar Wilde)

desert - an extensive and fertile tract of land producing heavy wheat and vintage crops in colonisation prospectuses.

desertion - an aversion to fighting, as exhibited by abandoning an army or a wife.

dessicate - to make dry.

Now Noble to the pulpit leaps,
The mighty dessicator,
The audience profoundly sleeps -
Slow snores the great creator. (Shelley)

despatches - a complete account of all the murders, outrages and other disgusting crimes which take place everywhere, disseminated daily by an Associated Press for the amelioration of the world in general.

electioneer - to stand on a platform and scream that Smith is a child of light and Jones a worm of the dust.

emancipation - a bondsman's change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself.

embassador - a minister of high rank maintained by one government at the capital of another to execute the will of his wife.

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 the greatest acceptance in our time.

ermine - the state, dignity or condition of a judge. The word is formed of the two words, err and mine - the one suggesting the tendency of a judicial mind, the other expressing, in a general way, the judicial notion of the rightful ownership of property in dispute.

euphemism - in rhetoric, a figure by which the severe asperity of truth is mitigated by the use of a softer expression than the facts would warrant - as, to call Mr Charles Crocker ninety-nine kinds of knave.

expediency - the father of all the virtues.

expostulation - one of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

fatigue - the condition of philosopher after having considered human wisdom and virtue.

fear - a sense of the total depravity of the immediate future.

fickleness - the iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.

Flood - a superior degree of dampness. Specifically, a great strom described by Berosus and Moses, when, according to the latter's rain-guage, there was a precipitation of moisture to the depth of one-eighth of a mile in twenty-four hours for forty days. The former did not measure, apparently, for he simply explains (in pretty good Greek) that it rained cats and dogs. The learned author of the cunieform inscriptions from the Mesopotamian mounds draws a number of carpet-tacks on a brick to signify that it was "quite a smart shower considering the season."

flop - suddenly to change one's opinion and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turncoat by some of our partisan journals.

fool - a person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war - founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting - such as creation's dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand has warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilisation, and in the twilight he prepares Man's evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human civilisation.

friend - an investigator upon the slide of whose microscope we live, move and have our being.

friendship - a ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

frontespiece - a protuberance of the human face, beginning between the eyes and terminating, as a rule, in somebody's business.

gas-meter - the family liar in the basement.

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.

ghoul - a demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring the dead. The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of controversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world of comforting beliefts than to give it anything good in their place. In 1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with many heads and an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in mor ethan one place at a time. Thge good man was coming away from dinner at the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he would have seized the demon at all hazards. Atholson relates that a ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury and ducked in a horsepond. The water turned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye." The pond has since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so affected by the sinister occurence that he never again showed himself in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.

gnu - an animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

A hunter from Kew caught a distant view
Of a peacefully meditative gnu,
And he said: "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue
In its blood at a closer interview."
But the beast did ensue and the hunter it threw
O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;
And he said as he flew: "It is well I withdrew
Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew
That really meritorious gnu." (Jarn Leffer)

grip - ex-Speaker Parks's manner of fondling the property of the commonwealth.

groan - the language in which a Republican Federal office-holder expounds his view of the political situation.

Hell - the residence of the late Dr. Noah Webster, dictionary-maker.

homoeopathist - the humorist of the medical profession.

homoeopathy - a theory and practice of medicine which aims to cure the diseases of fools. As it does not cure them, and does sometimes kill the fools, it is ridiculed by the thoughtless, but commended by the wise.

hunger - a peculiar disease afflicting all the classes of mankind and commonly treated by dieting. It is observed that those who live in fine houses have it the lightest. This information is useful to chronic sufferers.

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 or thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions of opinion and taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a deadline.

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.

immaculate - not as yet spotted by the police.

inauspicious - not lousy with it in the crop. . . The author of this dictionary feels it his duty to explain to the Eastern reader that the appalling phrase immediately foregoing is not of his own invention, and that he employs it here, with reluctance, in order to be clearly understood in the mining camps of this state, where "English as she is spoke" on the Atlantic seaboard is altogether unintelligible. The author begs to assure his Eastern readers that the phrase in questions means nothing very disagreeable; it may be translated thus: "Not showing much free gold in the outcroppings." Let us now proceed.

incompossible - unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope for one of them, but not enough for both - as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man. Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only incompatibility let loose. Instead of such low language as "Go heel yourself - I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are incompossible," would convey an equally significant intention and in stately courtesy are altogether superior.

inconsiderate - imperfectly attentive to the welfare, happiness, comfort or desires of others; as cholera, smallpox, the rattlesnake and the satirical newspaper.

incorporation - the act of uniting several persons into one fiction called a corporation, in order that they may be no longer responsible for their actions. A, B and C are a corporation. A robs, B steals and C (it is necessary that there be one gentleman among them) cheats. It is a plundering, thieving, swindling corporation. But A, B and C, who have jointly determined and severally executed every crime of the corporation, are blameless. It is wrong to mention them by name when censuring their acts as a corporation, but right when praising. Incorporation is somewhat like the ring of Gyges: it bestows the blessing of invisibility - comfortable to knaves. The scoundrel who invented incorporation is dead - he has disincorporated.

indecision - the chief element of success; "for whereas," saith Sir Thomas Brewbold, "there is but one way to do nothing and divers ways to do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so many chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards" - a most clear and satisfactory exposition of the matter.

indigestion - a disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the western wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: "Plenty well, no pray; big bellyache, heap God."

infallible - not liable to error; dead-sure - as Frank Pixley, when speaking ex cathartica.

ingratitude - a form of self-respect that is not inconsistent with acceptance of favours.

inhumanity - one of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.

innate - natural, inherent - as innate ideas, that is to say, ideas that we are born with, having had them previously imparted to us. The doctrine of innate ideas is one of the most admirable faiths of philosophy, being itself an innate idea and therefore inaccessible to disproof, though Locke foolishly supposed himself to have "given it a black eye." Among innate ideas may be mentioned the belief in one's ability to conduct a newspaper, in the greatness of one's country, in the superiority of one's civilisation, in the importance of one's personal affairs and in the interesting nature of one's diseases.

intention - the mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of the act intended by the person incurring the intention. . . When figured out and accurately apprehended this will be found one of the most penetrating and far-reaching definitions in this whole dictionary. It has taken the first premium at three country fairs and is prescribed by all respectable physicians as a dead shot for worms. It increased the corn yield of Illinois one million bushels in a single season, discovered the source of the Nile and saved the day at Shiloh.

interlocutor - the barometrical centre of depression at a minstrel show.

intoxication - a spiritual condition that goeth before the next morning.

intractable - stubbornly unwilling to adopt a course from which nothing can divert ourselves.

introduction - a social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The introduction attains its most malevolent development in this country, being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every American being the equal of every other American, it follows that everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration of Independence should have read thus: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the liberty to introduce persons to one another without first ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of strangers."

ivory - a substance kindly provided by nature for making billiard balls. It is usually harvested from the mouths of elephants.

jealous - unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

jockey - a person whose business it is to ride and throw races.

joss-sticks - small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain rites of our holy religion.

Jove - a mythical being whom the Greeks and Romans ridiculously supposed to be the supreme ruler of the universe - unacquainted as they were with our holy religion.