THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY W/NEW INTRO BY MORRIS

THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY W/NEW INTRO BY MORRIS

<strong>History</strong>, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. <strong>Marriage</strong>, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. <strong>Self-Esteem</strong>, n. An erroneous appraisement.<br> These caustic aphorisms, collected in <em>The Devil's Dictionary</em>, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as <em>The Cynic's Word Book</em> (1906) and later reissued under its preferred name in 1911, Bierce's notorious collection of barbed definitions forcibly contradicts Samuel Johnson's earlier definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. There was nothing harmless about Ambrose Bierce, and the words he shaped into verbal pitchforks a century ago--with or without the devil's help--can still draw blood today.<br>