The Devil’s Dictionary Ambrose Bierce (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📖

mirth,”
He said, and kicked the fellow back to earth. —⁠“The Mad Philosopher” 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, someone says: “The die is cast,” which is not true, for it is cut. The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet and domestic economist, Senator Depew:

A cube of cheese no larger than a die
May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.

Digestion

The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead⁠—a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.

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.

His right to govern me is clear as day,
My duty manifest to disobey;
And if that fit observance e’er I shut
May I and duty be alike undone.

—⁠Israfel Brown Dissemble

To put a clean shirt upon the character.

Let us dissemble.

—⁠Adam 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. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival⁠—an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a doormat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.

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.

Druids

Priests and ministers of an ancient Celtic religion which did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice. Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith. Pliny says their religion, originating in Britain, spread eastward as far as Persia. Caesar says those who desired to study its mysteries went to Britain. Caesar himself went to Britain, but does not appear to have obtained any high preferment in the Druidical Church, although his talent for human sacrifice was considerable.

Druids performed their religious rites in groves, and knew nothing of church mortgages and the season-ticket system of pew rents. They were, in short, heathens and⁠—as they were once complacently catalogued by a distinguished prelate of the Church of England⁠—Dissenters.

Duckbill

Your account at your restaurant during the canvasback 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.

That dueling’s a gentlemanly vice
I hold; and wish that it had been my lot
To live my life out in some favored spot⁠—
Some country where it is considered nice
To split a rival like a fish, or slice
A husband like a spud, or with a shot
Bring down a debtor doubled in a knot
And ready to be put upon the ice.
Some miscreants there are, whom I do long
To shoot, or stab, or some such way reclaim
The scurvy rogues to better lives and manners,
I seem to see them now⁠—a mighty throng.
It looks as if to challenge me they came,
Jauntily marching with brass bands and banners!

—⁠Xamba Q. Dar Dullard

A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows; tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art, literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower and made a favorable report of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois, but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.

Duty

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

Sir Lavender Portwine, in favor at court,
Was wroth at his master, who’d kissed Lady Port.
His anger provoked him to take the king’s head,
But duty prevailed, and he took the king’s bread,
Instead.

—⁠G. J. E Eat

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

“I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,” said Brillat-Savarin, beginning