The Devil's Dictionary  

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 +{| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5"
 +| style="text-align: left;" | "The frank yet graceful use of "[[I (pronoun)|I]]" distinguishes a [[Literary merit|good writer]] from a [[bad writer|bad]]; the latter carries it with the manner of a [[theft|thief]] trying to [[cloak]] his [[looting|loot]]." --''[[The Devil's Dictionary]]''
 +<hr>
 +''[[Marriage]]'' : (n.) A household consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two. --ibid
 +|}
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-'''''The Devil's Dictionary''''' is a [[satire|satirical]] "reference" book written by [[Ambrose Bierce]]. The book offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political [[doublespeak]], as well as other aspects of human foolishness and frailty. It was originally published in 1906 as ''The Cynic's Word Book'' before being retitled in 1911. Modern "unabridged" versions that include Bierce "definitions" that were for various reasons missed by earlier editions continue to be popular a century later.+'''''The Devil's Dictionary''''' is a [[satirical dictionary]] written by [[Ambrose Bierce]]. The book offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political [[doublespeak]], as well as other aspects of human foolishness and frailty. It was originally published in 1906 as ''The Cynic's Word Book'' before being retitled in 1911. Modern "unabridged" versions that include Bierce "definitions" that were for various reasons missed by earlier editions continue to be popular a century later.
==History== ==History==
Line 30: Line 35:
In 2000, [[S. T. Joshi]] and David E. Schultz published ''The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary'' (ISBN 0-8203-2196-6), including previously uncollected, unpublished and alternative entries, restoring definitions dropped from previous editions and removing almost 200 wrongly attributed to Bierce. 14 Dec 2009 this work was brought out in paperback. In 2000, [[S. T. Joshi]] and David E. Schultz published ''The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary'' (ISBN 0-8203-2196-6), including previously uncollected, unpublished and alternative entries, restoring definitions dropped from previous editions and removing almost 200 wrongly attributed to Bierce. 14 Dec 2009 this work was brought out in paperback.
 +===Noteworthy editions===
 +
 +* '''New York: [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday, Page & Co.]], [October] 1906 (as ''The Cynic's Word Book'').''' First edition. Includes 521 definitions beginning with A-L.
 +* '''London: Arthur F. Bird, [stated publication year 1906; actual publication year 1907] (as ''The Cynic's Word Book'').''' First British edition.
 +* '''New York and Washington, D.C.: Neale Publishing, 1909-1912 [''The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce: Volume VII''].''' First edition with the title ''The Devil's Dictionary''. Includes 1,013 definitions.
 +* '''New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925, 1926, 1935, 1944.''' First reprint.
 +* '''Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, ''c.'' 1926.''' Little Blue Book No. 1056. First abridged edition.
 +* '''New York: Citadel Press, 1946 (in ''The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce'').''' Introduction by [[Clifton Fadiman]]. First inclusion in an anthology.
 +* '''New York: Hill & Wang, 1957, 1961, 1962, 1968; Mattituck, NY: Amereon, 1983.''' Introduction by Bierce biographer [[Carey McWilliams (journalist)]].
 +* ''' New York: Peter Pauper Press, 1958
 +* '''Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1967; London: Victor Gollancz, 1967, 1968; Harmondsworth, UK or London: Penguin, 1971, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1990, 2001 (as ''The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary'')''', Ernest Jerome Hopkins, ed. Preface by John Meyers Meyers. Introduction by Hopkins. To Bierce's 1911 book, Hopkins adds 851 definitions from other sources, including 189 not by Bierce but from Harry Ellington Brook, the editor of ''The Wasp''.<ref>Bierce, letter to S. O. Howes, 19 Jan. 1906: ms., Ambrose Bierce Papers, Huntington Library. See also ''The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary'', David E. Schultz and [[S. T. Joshi]], eds.; Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2000, pp. xvi-xvii, xxv, xxvii-xxviii nn. 25, 26; and [[S. T. Joshi]] and David E. Schultz, ''Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources'', Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1999, p. 57.</ref>
 +* '''New York: Limited Editions Club, 1972.''' Limited to 1,500 copies signed by artist [[Fritz Kredel]]. Introduction by [[Louis Kronenberger]].
 +* '''Owings Mills, MD: Stemmer House, 1978.''' Introduction by Lawrence R. Suhre.
 +* '''Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1980.''' Series: 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature. Leatherbound limited edition.
 +* '''Chicago, IL: [[First Comics]], February 1991 (as ''The Devil's Dictionary and Other Works'')'''. (Reprinted: New York: Papercutz, 2010 ; Godalming, UK: Melia, 2010) Series: [[Classics Illustrated]]. Adapted and illustrated by [[Gahan Wilson]].
 +* '''New York, Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]], 1999, 2002.''' Introduction by Bierce biographer Roy Morris, Jr.
 +* '''Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2000, 2002 (as ''The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary'')''', David E. Schultz and [[S. T. Joshi]], eds. Lengthy, information-packed introduction covers ''The Devil's Dictionary'' as a work of moral instruction and provides the most detailed history of Bierce's writing of the text, the 1906 book publication of ''The Cynic's Word Book'', and the 1911 book publication of ''The Devil's Dictionary''. Main body of the text adds 632 definitions from Bierce's writings to provide 1,645 definitions. Omits 189 definitions incorrectly attributed to Bierce by Ernest Jerome Hopkins. Appendices provide an additional 35 “supplemental definitions” that Bierce wrote for the 1911 book but did not use, plus 49 “other definitions” gleaned from Bierce's other published books and journalism. Does not include definitions Bierce wrote in letters. Includes detailed bibliography of every appearance and variation for each definition. Extensively annotated throughout.
 +* '''Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka Productions, 2003 (as ''The Devil's Dictionary and More Tales of War, Satire, and the Supernatural'')'''. Series: Graphics Illustrated. Adapted and illustrated by [[Rick Geary]].
 +* '''London: [[Folio Society]], 2003, 2004, 2010.''' Introduction by [[Miles Kington]]. Illustrations by Peter Forster.
 +* '''London, Berlin, New York: [[Bloomsbury Publishing]], 2003, 2004, 2008.''' Introduction by [[Angus Calder]]. Illustrations by [[Ralph Steadman]].
 +* '''New York: [[Barnes & Noble]], 2007.''' Introduction by Craig A. Warren.
 +* '''Boone, IA: [[Library of America]], 2011 (in ''Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs'')''', [[S. T. Joshi]], ed.
 +
 +===Translated editions===
 +See [[Translations of The Devil's Dictionary|Translations of ''The Devil's Dictionary'']].
== Examples == == Examples ==
Line 52: Line 82:
==Other dictionaries in the style of Bierce== ==Other dictionaries in the style of Bierce==
-Since Bierce's publication of the ''Devil's Dictionary'', it has created a legacy in that a number of modernized variants have appeared. Inspired by Bierce, they both update and extend the collection of satirical definitions. In chronological order, these include:+:''[[faux dictionaries]]''
- +Since Bierce's publication of the ''Devil's Dictionary'', there have been a number of what have come to be known as "faux dictionaries."
-* [[Evan Esar]], [http://lccn.loc.gov/43014172 ''Esar's Comic Dictionary''], Harvest House, 1943.+
-* [[Leonard Rossiter]], [http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=isbn%3A0600201058 ''Devil's Bedside Book''], Hamlyn, 1980, ISBN 0-600-20105-8.+
-* [[Stan Kelly-Bootle]], [[The Computer Contradictionary]], McGraw-Hill, 1981. ISBN 0-07-034022-6. +
-* [[Rick Bayan]], [http://lccn.loc.gov/94005472 ''The Cynic's Dictionary''], Hearst Books, 1994, ISBN 0-7858-1713-1.+
-* [http://lccn.loc.gov/2008383263 ''Chamber's Gigglossary''], Chambers, 2008, ISBN 0-550-10414-3.+
- +
== See also == == See also ==
 +*[[Devil]]
*[[Dictionary]] *[[Dictionary]]
 +*[[American satire]]
 +*[[The Devil's Dictionary (full text)]]
{{GFDL}} {{GFDL}}
 +[[Category:WLL]]

Revision as of 20:55, 14 January 2019

"The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to cloak his loot." --The Devil's Dictionary

Marriage : (n.) A household consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two. --ibid

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The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce. The book offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political doublespeak, as well as other aspects of human foolishness and frailty. It was originally published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book before being retitled in 1911. Modern "unabridged" versions that include Bierce "definitions" that were for various reasons missed by earlier editions continue to be popular a century later.

Contents

History

Origins

The origins of The Devil's Dictionary can be traced to when Ambrose Bierce was a columnist in the San Francisco-based News Letter, a small weekly financial magazine which had been founded by Frederick Marriott in the late 1850s. The News Letter, although a serious magazine aimed at businessmen, contained a page set aside for informal satirical content, entitled The Town Crier. Bierce was hired as this page's editor in December 1868, writing with satire, irreverence and a lack of inhibition, thus becoming known as the 'laughing devil' of San Francisco.

Although the origins of The Devil's Dictionary are normally placed in 1881 (the point at which Bierce himself said it began) the idea started in August 1869 when Bierce, short of topics to write about and having recently bought a new copy of Webster's Unabridged dictionary, suggested the possibility of writing a "Comic Dictionary". He quoted the entry from Webster's for Vicegerents and italicised the section,

Kings are sometimes called God's vicegerents. It is to be wished they would always deserve the appellation

He then suggested how Noah Webster might have used his talent in a comic form and it was here that the idea of a Comic Dictionary was born.

The idea manifested itself in 1875 when Bierce, who had resigned at the Town Crier and had spent three years in London, returned to San Francisco in the hope of regaining his earlier journalistic post in the News Letter. He sent two submissions to the editor of the News Letter, both written under aliases, one of which was entitled The Demon's Dictionary and contained 48 words with new definitions in Bierce's trademark style of acerbic wit. Although forgotten by Ambrose Bierce in his compiling of The Devil's Dictionary, these entries were made available in the Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, which was first published in 1967.

Early development

The Devil's Dictionary did not reappear in Bierce's next column ("Prattle," in the magazine The Argonaut, of which he had become an editor in March 1877). Nevertheless, he used the idea of comic definitions in his columns dated November 17, 1877, and September 14, 1878.

It was in early 1881 that Bierce first used the title, The Devil's Dictionary, while editor-in-chief of another weekly San Francisco magazine, The Wasp. The "dictionary" proved popular, and during his time in this post (1881–86) he included 88 installments, each of 15–20 new definitions.

In 1887 Bierce became an editor in The Examiner and featured "The Cynic's Dictionary," which was to be the last of his "dictionary" columns until they reappeared in 1904, when they continued erratically before finishing in July 1906.

A number of the definitions are accompanied by satiric verses, many of which are signed with comic pseudonyms such as Salder Bupp and Orm Pludge; the most frequently appearing "contributor" is "that learned and ingenious cleric, Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J., whose lines bear his initials".

Publication

What had started as a newspaper serialization was first reproduced in book form in 1906 under the dubious title The Cynic's Word Book. Published by Doubleday, Page and Company, this contained definitions of 500 words in the first half of the alphabet (A–L). A further 500 words (M–Z) were published in 1911 in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, this time under the name of The Devil's Dictionary. This was a name much preferred by Bierce and he claimed the earlier 'more reverent' title had been forced upon him by the religious scruples of his previous employer.

In 1967, an expanded version of The Devil's Dictionary was published, following extensive research by Ernest J. Hopkins. This version included the definitions which had been left out by Bierce when his Collected Works were compiled, due to the fact that he was compiling it in Washington, D.C. but many of the entries were in San Francisco and unavailable following the earthquake of 1906. This updated version adds 851 definitions to the 1,000 which appeared in versions published in Bierce's lifetime; in particular, it includes the words preceding "Abasement" which were originally defined in the Demon's Dictionary.

Various editions are currently in print including ISBN 0-19-512627-0, by Oxford University Press, and ISBN 0-8203-2401-9. It is also available online through Project Gutenberg as well as through Wiktionary, a freely editable dictionary. The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary is in print in the Penguin Classics series, as ISBN 0-14-118592-9.

In 2000, S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz published The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary (ISBN 0-8203-2196-6), including previously uncollected, unpublished and alternative entries, restoring definitions dropped from previous editions and removing almost 200 wrongly attributed to Bierce. 14 Dec 2009 this work was brought out in paperback.

Noteworthy editions

  • New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., [October] 1906 (as The Cynic's Word Book). First edition. Includes 521 definitions beginning with A-L.
  • London: Arthur F. Bird, [stated publication year 1906; actual publication year 1907] (as The Cynic's Word Book). First British edition.
  • New York and Washington, D.C.: Neale Publishing, 1909-1912 [The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce: Volume VII]. First edition with the title The Devil's Dictionary. Includes 1,013 definitions.
  • New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925, 1926, 1935, 1944. First reprint.
  • Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, c. 1926. Little Blue Book No. 1056. First abridged edition.
  • New York: Citadel Press, 1946 (in The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce). Introduction by Clifton Fadiman. First inclusion in an anthology.
  • New York: Hill & Wang, 1957, 1961, 1962, 1968; Mattituck, NY: Amereon, 1983. Introduction by Bierce biographer Carey McWilliams (journalist).
  • New York: Peter Pauper Press, 1958
  • Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1967; London: Victor Gollancz, 1967, 1968; Harmondsworth, UK or London: Penguin, 1971, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1990, 2001 (as The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary), Ernest Jerome Hopkins, ed. Preface by John Meyers Meyers. Introduction by Hopkins. To Bierce's 1911 book, Hopkins adds 851 definitions from other sources, including 189 not by Bierce but from Harry Ellington Brook, the editor of The Wasp.<ref>Bierce, letter to S. O. Howes, 19 Jan. 1906: ms., Ambrose Bierce Papers, Huntington Library. See also The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary, David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, eds.; Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2000, pp. xvi-xvii, xxv, xxvii-xxviii nn. 25, 26; and S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources, Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1999, p. 57.</ref>
  • New York: Limited Editions Club, 1972. Limited to 1,500 copies signed by artist Fritz Kredel. Introduction by Louis Kronenberger.
  • Owings Mills, MD: Stemmer House, 1978. Introduction by Lawrence R. Suhre.
  • Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1980. Series: 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature. Leatherbound limited edition.
  • Chicago, IL: First Comics, February 1991 (as The Devil's Dictionary and Other Works). (Reprinted: New York: Papercutz, 2010 ; Godalming, UK: Melia, 2010) Series: Classics Illustrated. Adapted and illustrated by Gahan Wilson.
  • New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, 2002. Introduction by Bierce biographer Roy Morris, Jr.
  • Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2000, 2002 (as The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary), David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, eds. Lengthy, information-packed introduction covers The Devil's Dictionary as a work of moral instruction and provides the most detailed history of Bierce's writing of the text, the 1906 book publication of The Cynic's Word Book, and the 1911 book publication of The Devil's Dictionary. Main body of the text adds 632 definitions from Bierce's writings to provide 1,645 definitions. Omits 189 definitions incorrectly attributed to Bierce by Ernest Jerome Hopkins. Appendices provide an additional 35 “supplemental definitions” that Bierce wrote for the 1911 book but did not use, plus 49 “other definitions” gleaned from Bierce's other published books and journalism. Does not include definitions Bierce wrote in letters. Includes detailed bibliography of every appearance and variation for each definition. Extensively annotated throughout.
  • Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka Productions, 2003 (as The Devil's Dictionary and More Tales of War, Satire, and the Supernatural). Series: Graphics Illustrated. Adapted and illustrated by Rick Geary.
  • London: Folio Society, 2003, 2004, 2010. Introduction by Miles Kington. Illustrations by Peter Forster.
  • London, Berlin, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2003, 2004, 2008. Introduction by Angus Calder. Illustrations by Ralph Steadman.
  • New York: Barnes & Noble, 2007. Introduction by Craig A. Warren.
  • Boone, IA: Library of America, 2011 (in Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs), S. T. Joshi, ed.

Translated editions

See Translations of The Devil's Dictionary.

Examples

Conservative 
(n.) A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
Cynic 
(n.) A blackguard 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.
Gas meter
(n.) The family liar in the basement.
I
I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its plural is said to be _We_, but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but fine. The frank yet graceful use of "I" distinguishes a good writer from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to cloak his loot."


Lawyer 
(n.) One skilled in circumvention of the law.
Marriage 
(n.) A household consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Religion 
(n.) A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Youth 
(n.) 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.
Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice is never heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost!Polydore Smith

Other dictionaries in the style of Bierce

faux dictionaries

Since Bierce's publication of the Devil's Dictionary, there have been a number of what have come to be known as "faux dictionaries."

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Devil's Dictionary" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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