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

the seas. Court Fool

The plaintiff.

Coward

One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Craft

A fool’s substitute for brains.

Crayfish

A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.

In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend their nature afterward.

—⁠Sir James Merivale Creditor

One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Cremona

A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.

Critic

A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

There is a land of pure delight,
Beyond the Jordan’s flood,
Where saints, apparelled all in white,
Fling back the critic’s mud.

And as he legs it through the skies,
His pelt a sable hue,
He sorrows sore to recognize
The missiles that he threw.

—⁠Orrin Goof Cross

An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity, but really antedating it by thousands of years. By many it has been believed to be identical with the crux ansata of the ancient phallic worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that, to the rites of primitive peoples. We have today the White Cross as a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent neutrality in war. Having in mind the former, the reverend Father Gassalasca Jape smites the lyre to the effect following:

“Be good, be good!” the sisterhood
Cry out in holy chorus,
And, to dissuade from sin, parade
Their various charms before us.

But why, O why, has ne’er an eye
Seen her of winsome manner
And youthful grace and pretty face
Flaunting the White Cross banner?

Now where’s the need of speech and screed
To better our behaving?
A simpler plan for saving man
(But, first, is he worth saving?)

Is, dears, when he declines to flee
From bad thoughts that beset him,
Ignores the Law as ’twere a straw,
And wants to sin⁠—don’t let him.

Cui Bono?

(Latin.) What good would that do me?

Cunning

The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person from a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction and great material adversity. An Italian proverb says: “The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses.”

Cupid

The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of its deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the wounds of an arrow⁠—of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to materialize the subtle spirit and suggestion of the work⁠—this is eminently worthy of the age that, giving it birth, laid it on the doorstep of posterity.

Curiosity

An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

Curse

Energetically to belabor with a verbal slapstick. This is an operation which in literature, particularly in the drama, is commonly fatal to the victim. Nevertheless, the liability to a cursing is a risk that cuts but a small figure in fixing the rates of life insurance.

Cynic

A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.

D Damn

A word formerly much used by the Paphlagonians, the meaning of which is lost. By the learned Dr. Dolabelly Gak it is believed to have been a term of satisfaction, implying the highest possible degree of mental tranquillity. Professor Groke, on the contrary, thinks it expressed an emotion of tumultuous delight, because it so frequently occurs in combination with the word jod or god, meaning “joy.” It would be with great diffidence that I should advance an opinion conflicting with that of either of these formidable authorities.

Dance

To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor’s wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.

Danger

A savage beast which, when it sleeps,
Man girds at and despises,
But takes himself away by leaps
And bounds when it arises.

—⁠Ambat Delaso Daring

One of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in security.

Datary

A high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the Pope’s bulls with the words Datum Romae. He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of God.

Dawn

The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

Day

A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper⁠—the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.

Dead

Done with the work of breathing; done
With all the world; the mad race run
Through to the end; the golden goal
Attained and found to be a hole!

—⁠Squatol Johnes Debauchee

One who has so