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

for wisdom cools
When e’er we let the wine rest.
Here’s death to Prohibition’s fools,
And every kind of vine-pest! —⁠Jamrach Holobom Grapeshot

An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.

Grave

A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

Beside a lonely grave I stood⁠—
With brambles ’twas encumbered;
The winds were moaning in the wood,
Unheard by him who slumbered,

A rustic standing near, I said:
“He cannot hear it blowing!”
“ ’Course not,” said he: “the feller’s dead⁠—
He can’t hear nowt that’s going.”

“Too true,” I said; “alas, too true⁠—
No sound his sense can quicken!”
“Well, mister, wot is that to you?⁠—
The deadster ain’t a-kickin’.”

I knelt and prayed: “O Father, smile
On him, and mercy show him!”
That countryman looked on the while,
And said: “Ye didn’t know him.”

—⁠Pobeter Dunk Gravitation

The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportioned to the quantity of matter they contain⁠—the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A.

Great

“I’m great,” the Lion said⁠—“I reign
The monarch of the wood and plain!”

The Elephant replied: “I’m great⁠—
No quadruped can match my weight!”

“I’m great⁠—no animal has half
So long a neck!” said the Giraffe.

“I’m great,” the Kangaroo said⁠—“see
My femoral muscularity!”

The ’Possum said: “I’m great⁠—behold,
My tail is lithe and bald and cold!”

An Oyster fried was understood
To say: “I’m great because I’m good!”

Each reckons greatness to consist
In that in which he heads the list,

And Vierick thinks he tops his class
Because he is the greatest ass.

—⁠Arion Spurl Doke Guillotine

A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.

In his great work on Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution, the learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture⁠—the shrug⁠—among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracting the head inside the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and enforced in my work entitled Hereditary Emotions⁠—lib. II, c. XI) the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired by the guillotine during the period of that instrument’s activity.

Gunpowder

An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover, it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture.

Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of Columbia. One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of the Secretary’s profound attainments and personal character presented him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the seed of the Flashawful flabbergastor, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless, then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages, and audibly refusing to be comforted. “Great Scott! what is that?” cried a surveyor’s chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. “That,” said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again centering his attention upon his instrument, “is the Meridian of Washington.”

H Habeas Corpus

A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

Habit

A shackle for the free.

Hades

The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.

Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word “ᾍδης” as “Hell”; but a conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: “Gentlemen, somebody has been razing ‘Hell’ here!” Years afterward the good prelate’s death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.

Hag

An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads