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

n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man

standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot

is not considered as having a zenith, though from this view of the

matter there was once a considerably dissent among the learned, some

holding that the posture of the body was immaterial. These were

called Horizontalists, their opponents, Verticalists. The

Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished by Xanobus, the

philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist. Entering an

assembly of philosophers who were debating the matter, he cast a

severed human head at the feet of his opponents and asked them to

determine its zenith, explaining that its body was hanging by the

heels outside. Observing that it was the head of their leader, the

Horizontalists hastened to profess themselves converted to whatever

opinion the Crown might be pleased to hold, and Horizontalism took its

place among fides defuncti.

 

ZEUS, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter

and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers

who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to

have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought

that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his

monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives

are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he

worships under many sacred names.

 

ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one

carrying the white man’s burden. (From zed, z, and jag, an

Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)

 

He zedjagged so uncomen wyde

Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;

So, to com saufly thruh, I been

Constreynet for to doodge betwene.

 

Munwele

 

ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including

its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoology

was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother

has not come down to us. Two of the science’s most illustrious

expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we

learn (_L’Histoire generale des animaux_ and _A History of Animated

Nature_) that the domestic cow sheds its horn every two years.

 

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Devil’s Dictionary by Bierce