The Devil’s Dictionary
by Ambrose Bierce
Dictionary (noun): 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.”
This is the entry for “Dictionary” in Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. First published, in a large part, in the year 1906 (under the title The Cynic’s Word Book) the dictionary collects over 1 000 pithy and sardonic definitions that had appeared on and off in Bierce’s column in a weekly newspaper since 1881.
Definitions like:
“Year (noun): A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.”
“Distance (noun): The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call their own, and keep.”
“Selfish (adjective): Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.”
