The Devil's Dictionary

With the publication of a new edition of the language classic, The Devil's Dictionary, we take a look at the life of the wickedest man in San Francisco - Ambrose Bierce. Born in the now vanished frontier community of Horse Cave Creek in 1842, the tenth of thirteen children, the young Bierce was as devilish-acting as he was angelic-looking.He grew up to be a man, estranged from his family, preoccupied with death, who gloried in the ignorance of others and delighted in ridicule. He cultivated an overtly satanic public image - habitually wearing black and displaying a human skull and a box of ashes on his desk—the remains, he said of former friends. He took revenge on a world that he felt—with some reason—had wounded him physically, spiritually, and emotionally by writing The Devil's Dictionary.

With the able assistance of "my scholarly friend, Mr. Satan", Bierce set out to challenge the most cherished institutions of American society: love, marriage, law, religion, politics, patriotism, and art. Wit was his weapon of choice, and The Devil's Dictionary remains one of the wittiest, if also one of the most deeply subversive, books in the English language. Reader's would do well to keep in mind Kent's insightful warning to King Lear: "This is not altogether fool, my lord." For behind the word games and the mockery, the 998 definitions in The Devil's Dictionary comprise a deadly serious—and at times surprisingly personal—work of art. One modern critic has observed, with only slight exaggeration, that "each of these definitions, to some degree, may be said to define Bierce" himself. Certainly, the choice of words defined, as much as the definitions themselves, constitutes a sort of hidden autobiography, an indirect self-portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man at odds with his country, his family, his past, and himself. With the advantage of hindsight, one can almost chart Bierce's life chronologically in his definitions, moving from his oppressive religious upbringing through an equally oppressive marriage to deeper disillusionment over which hangs the pervasive emptiness of a man whose overall philosophy was summed up in two words: "Nothing matters".

Birth, n, The first and direst of all disasters
Childhood, n, The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth
Religion, n, A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable
Faith, n, Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel
Love, n, A temporary insanity curable by marriage
Affianced, pp, Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain
Wedding, n, A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable
Husband, n, One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate
Hers, pron, His
Once, adv, Enough
Twice, adv, Once too often
Alone, adj, In bad company
Day, n, A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent
November, n, The eleventh twelfth of a weariness
Year, n, A period of 365 disappointments

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