The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (best english books to read TXT) 📖

army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

 

PLOW, n. An implement that cries aloud for hands accustomed to the

pen.

 

PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the

decent and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of

ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band. To wrest the

wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.

 

POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In

woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her

conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of

others.

 

POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the

Magazines.

 

POKER, n. A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to

this lexicographer unknown.

 

POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation.

 

POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

 

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of

principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

 

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the

superstructure of organized society is reared. When we wriggles he

mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.

As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being

alive.

 

POLYGAMY, n. A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with

several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which

has but one.

 

POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found

in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an

uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the

power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing

independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he

possessed it he would have gone elsewhere. In the picturesque speech

of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was

known as “The Matter with Kansas.”

 

PORTABLE, adj. Exposed to a mutable ownership through vicissitudes of

possession.

 

His light estate, if neither he did make it

Nor yet its former guardian forsake it,

Is portable improperly, I take it.

 

Worgum Slupsky

 

PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They

are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed

with garlic.

 

POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.

 

POSITIVISM, n. A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and

affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte,

its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.

 

POSTERITY, n. An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a

popular author’s contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure

competitor.

 

POTABLE, n. Suitable for drinking. Water is said to be potable;

indeed, some declare it our natural beverage, although even they find

it palatable only when suffering from the recurrent disorder known as

thirst, for which it is a medicine. Upon nothing has so great and

diligent ingenuity been brought to bear in all ages and in all

countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of

substitutes for water. To hold that this general aversion to that

liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be

unscientific — and without science we are as the snakes and toads.

 

POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. The

number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who

suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about

it. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues

and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a

prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.

 

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf

of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

 

PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory

race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily

conceived. Melsius believed them to have inhabited “the Void” and to

have been something intermediate between fishes and birds. Little its

known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and

theologians with a controversy.

 

PRECEDENT, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in

the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a

Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of

doing as he pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has

only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate

those in the line of his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates

the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the

noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament.

 

PRECIPITATE, adj. Anteprandial.

 

Precipitate in all, this sinner

Took action first, and then his dinner.

 

Judibras

 

PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to

programme. This doctrine should not be confused with that of

foreordination, which means that all things are programmed, but does

not affirm their occurrence, that being only an implication from other

doctrines by which this is entailed. The difference is great enough

to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.

With the distinction of the two doctrines kept well in mind, and a

reverent belief in both, one may hope to escape perdition if spared.

 

PREDICAMENT, n. The wage of consistency.

 

PREDILECTION, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion.

 

PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation.

 

PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the

erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

An ancient philosopher, expounding his conviction that life is no

better than death, was asked by a disciple why, then, he did not die.

“Because,” he replied, “death is no better than life.”

It is longer.

 

PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum.

Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.

 

He lived in a period prehistoric,

When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.

Born later, when Clio, celestial recorded,

Set down great events in succession and order,

He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous

In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.

 

Orpheus Bowen

 

PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

 

PRELATE, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and

a fat preferment. One of Heaven’s aristocracy. A gentleman of God.

 

PREROGATIVE, n. A sovereign’s right to do wrong.

 

PRESBYTERIAN, n. One who holds the conviction that the government

authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.

 

PRESCRIPTION, n. A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the

situation with least harm to the patient.

 

PRESENT, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of

disappointment from the realm of hope.

 

PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time

and place.

In Boorioboola-Gha a man is presentable on occasions of ceremony

if he have his abdomen painted a bright blue and wear a cow’s tail; in

New York he may, if it please him, omit the paint, but after sunset he

must wear two tails made of the wool of a sheep and dyed black.

 

PRESIDE, v. To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable

result. In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument; as, “He

presided at the piccolo.”

 

The Headliner, holding the copy in hand,

Read with a solemn face:

“The music was very uncommonly grand —

The best that was every provided,

For our townsman Brown presided

At the organ with skill and grace.”

The Headliner discontinued to read,

And, spread the paper down

On the desk, he dashed in at the top of the screed:

“Great playing by President Brown.”

 

Orpheus Bowen

 

PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American

politics.

 

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom —

and of whom only — it is positively known that immense numbers of

their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

 

If that’s an honor surely ‘tis a greater

To have been a simple and undamned spectator.

Behold in me a man of mark and note

Whom no elector e’er denied a vote! —

An undiscredited, unhooted gent

Who might, for all we know, be President

By acclimation. Cheer, ye varlets, cheer —

I’m passing with a wide and open ear!

 

Jonathan Fomry

 

PREVARICATOR, n. A liar in the caterpillar estate.

 

PRICE, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of

conscience in demanding it.

 

PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported

by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the

Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies

Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is

commonly dead.

 

PRISON, n. A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures us

that —

 

“Stone walls do not a prison make,”

 

but a combination of the stone wall, the political parasite and the

moral instructor is no garden of sweets.

 

PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal’s baton in his

knapsack and an impediment in his hope.

 

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him

in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.

For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

Asked how he knew that an elephant was going on a journey, the

illustrious Jo. Miller cast a reproachful look upon his tormentor, and

answered, absently: “When it is ajar,” and threw himself from a high

promontory into the sea. Thus perished in his pride the most famous

humorist of antiquity, leaving to mankind a heritage of woe! No

successor worthy of the title has appeared, though Mr. Edward Bok, of

The Ladies’ Home Journal, is much respected for the purity and

sweetness of his personal character.

 

PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly

these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants,

with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could

supply — the sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of

prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into

favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its

capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of

propulsion.

 

PROOF, n. Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of

unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to

that of only one.

 

PROOFREADER, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing

nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.

 

PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may

be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the

passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The

object of man’s brief rapacity and long indifference.

 

PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one’s credibility for

future delivery.

 

PROSPECT, n. An outlook, usually forbidding. An expectation, usually

forbidden.

 

Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes —

O’er Ceylon blow your breath,

Where every prospect pleases,

Save only that of death.

 

Bishop Sheber

 

PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the

person so describing it.

 

PRUDE, n. A bawd hiding behind the back of her demeanor.

 

PUBLISH, n. In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in

a cone of critics.

 

PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success,

especially in politics. The other is Pull.

 

PYRRHONISM, n. An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It

consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its

modern professors have added that.

Q

QUEEN, n. A