Ambrose Bierce – the Unabridged Devils Dictionary
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
e Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary Ambrose Bierce edited by David E. Shultz and S.T. Joshi Name /G1114/G1114_FM 03/30/00 06:40AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 1 # 1 The EeUnabridged Devil’s Dictionary this page intentionally left blank Name /G1114/G1114_FM 03/30/00 06:40AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 3 # 3 ambrose bierce edited by david e. schultz & s. t. joshi The EeUnabridged Devil’s Dictionary pag to place TP ART The University of Georgia Press Athens & London Name /G1114/G1114_FM 03/30/00 06:40AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 4 # 4 ᭧ 2000 by the University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602 All rights reserved Illustration ᭧ Ed Lindlof Set in Carter Cone Galliard by G&S Typesetters Printed and bound by Maple-Vail The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Printed in the United States of America 04 03 02 01 00 c 54321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bierce, Ambrose, 1842–1914? The unabridged devil’s dictionary / by Ambrose Bierce ; edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi. p. cm. Rev. ed. of: Devil’s dictionary. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8203-2196-6 (alk. paper) 1. English language—Dictionaries—Humor. 2. English language—Semantics—Humor. 3. Vocabulary—Humor. I. Schultz, David E., 1952– II. Joshi, S. T., 1958– III. Bierce, Ambrose, 1842–1914? Devil’s dictionary. IV. Title. ps1097 .d43 2000b 423Ј.02Ј07—dc21 99-087396 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Name /G1114/G1114_FM 03/30/00 06:40AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 5 # 5 contents acknowledgments vii introduction ix list of abbreviations xxxi The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary 1 appendix 247 notes 271 list of appearances of definitions 349 bibliography 383 index 391 this page intentionally left blank Name /G1114/G1114_FM 03/30/00 06:40AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 7 # 7 acknowledgments We conducted most of our research at the Bancroft Library, University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley; Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Huntington Library and Art Gallery; Los Angeles Public Library; New York Public Library; New York University Library; Princeton University Library; San Francisco Public Library; and O. Meredith Wilson Library, University of Min- nesota, Minneapolis. We are grateful to librarians at the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Public Library; Arizona State University (Tempe); St. Cloud (Minnesota) State University; and New York Public Library for their assistance. Leslie Crabtree and Alan Gullette assisted in obtaining some of the material used in preparing this volume. John D. Beatty, Lawrence I. Berkove, Jonathan Johnson, and Gary Pokorny provided information for some of the annotations. We are grateful to the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, for permission to print extracts from ‘‘From which to select and prepare additions to ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ if needed’’; and to the Huntington Library and Art Gal- lery, San Marino, California, for permission to quote extracts from the typeset- ting copy of The Devil’s Dictionary. this page intentionally left blank Name /G1114/G1114_INT 03/30/00 06:43AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 9 # 1 introduction Any writer of worth, no matter how large or varied his or her literary corpus, typically has a single work that encapsulates precisely his or her worldview and major themes or concerns. That piece may or may not be the writer’s very best performance, but it is the one by which his or her essential thought can be most readily identified. Ambrose Bierce’s ‘‘What I Saw of Shiloh’’ and ‘‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’’ may be his greatest works, but The Devil’s Dictionary is quintessential Bierce. In fact, his life and career can be summarized in a single sentence: Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. There can be no mistaking that this definition, lodged between ‘‘Curse’’ and ‘‘Damn’’ in the first edition of his celebrated dictionary (nestled somewhat in- nocuously herein between ‘‘Custard’’ and ‘‘Dad’’), is Bierce’s manifesto; that he defiantly and proudly equates the ‘‘blackguard’’ with himself; and that it is not his vision that is ‘‘faulty’’ but everyone else’s. The coda to the definition—‘‘Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision’’—is the purest distillation of his vocation: to sing out the truth, loudly and unflinchingly, no matter the cost. The removal of one’s organs of sight merely thwarts one’s ability to observe firsthand the misdeeds of one’s fellow human beings, who continue to commit the misdeeds. Bierce’s mission was to eradicate the misdeeds. Bierce was not one to write directly of personal matters in his work. In his later years he penned a few autobiographical sketches, mostly about his Civil War days and other select colorful moments, but he wrote no sustained account of his life, which he considered irrelevant to the evaluation of his work. His entire jour- nalistic corpus can be read as a kind of autobiography—not a detailed chrono- logical record of the primary events of his life, for his life was largely dedicated to the solitary work of writing, but instead a record of the life of the mind. Even Name /G1114/G1114_INT 03/30/00 06:43AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 10 # 2 such terse, unexplicated statements as dictionary definitions speak volumes about the private dimension of Bierce’s life. So wherefore The Devil’s Dictionary? Its author, ostensibly Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?), said nothing in private correspondence or in print about his pur- pose or intent in writing it. It was initially published not as a complete (albeit mock) reference book from which bits were occasionally extracted but as a work in progress in irregular installments published in various magazines and news- papers over a period of thirty years. Bierce’s ‘‘Devil’s Dictionary’’ made its unher- alded debut in 1881 along with ‘‘Prattle,’’ his weekly column of miscellaneous commentary, as his first contributions to the San Francisco weekly, the Wasp. In those days Bierce’s work was published mostly unsigned or pseudonymously, but readers recognized the distinctive work of the former ‘‘Town Crier’’ of the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser and the ‘‘Prattler’’ of the Argonaut, so that a byline would have been little more than a formality. The Devil’s Dictionary may be said ostensibly to be Bierce’s work, because one installment declared it instead to be ‘‘one of the most useful works that its author, Dr. John Satan, has ever produced.’’ 1 Could anyone but Satan himself be the author of a ‘‘devil’s dictionary’’? Possibly. Fundamentalists and literalists believe God to be the author of the Bible. But just as biblical tradition holds that God did not literally put pen to paper to reveal his thought, instead inspiring certain writers to undertake that task, we find that the ‘‘writer who evolves this [devil’s] dictionary [is inspired] from an understanding illuminated from Below...by the Personage whose title it bears.’’ 2 The persona Bierce had affected in print since his days as the Town Crier (1868–72)—probably in vehement rebellion against his fundamentalist upbring- ing—was that of a close partner of Satan, if not Satan himself.3 For two thirds of his career, Bierce tirelessly affected the persona of a demonic journalist.4 His first book, the pseudonymously published The Fiend’s Delight (1873), named for one of Satan’s minions, contains a preface that four decades later could have applied to The Devil’s Dictionary: The atrocities constituting this ‘‘cold collation’’ of diabolisms are taken mainly from various Californian journals. They are cast in the American lan- guage, and liberally enriched with unintelligibility. In the pursuit of my design I think I have killed a good many people in one way and another; but the reader will please to observe that they are not people worth the trouble of leaving alive. Besides, I had the interests of my collaborator to consult. In writing, as in compiling, I have been ably assisted by my scholarly friend Mr. Satan; and to this worthy gentleman must be attributed most of the views x:introduction Name /G1114/G1114_INT 03/30/00 06:43AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 11 # 3 herein set forth. While the plan of the work is partly my own, its spirit is wholly his; and this illustrates the ascendancy of the creative over the merely imitative mind. Palmam qui meruit ferat—I shall be content with the profit.5 The Devil’s Dictionary, regardless of whether Satan composed or inspired it, mockingly celebrates humanity’s proclivity for willfully bending and distorting language to camouflage less than admirable behavior. The lexicographer pro- fesses to have compiled a ‘‘compendium of everything that is known up to date of its completion,’’ just as any lexicographer might.6 But whereas we might ex- pect a dictionary to be a useful reference book that enlightens upon each consul- tation or an authority by which to interpret the meanings of unknown or unfa- miliar words, we are warned that this ‘‘devil’s dictionary’’ is likely to produce only gloom.7 Even the staunchest optimist would be unable to disagree with this as- sessment, for The Devil’s Dictionary is an unrelenting catalog of the moral failings of human beings. It abounds with examples of sin and immorality, egomania, hypocrisy, gross stupidity not only of individuals but also of the human race (at least the American species), fraudulence, intolerance, euphemism, phony gen- tility, hairsplitting about trivial religious matters, outmoded and useless habits and rites, death and funerary practices, the desire for immortality, deception (of- ten of self ), and, perhaps most sadly of all, selfishness.