Best of – ‘The Devil’s dictionary’

Legal Dictionaries

Image credit: Leonid Dzhepko. This picture is published under this creative commons license.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of a dictionary? Huge collection of never-to-be-used long/boring words and synonyms? Can a dictionary make you drop everything you are doing and engage you with its wit, humor and truth? That’s what, ‘The Devil’s dictionary’ by Ambrose Bierce did for me! Once I started reading the first page, I just couldn’t stop flipping the pages!!

Here is the collection of my favorite (Best of) twenty five words and their meanings, from this Devil’s dictionary.

1. Abstainer – A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

2. Acquaintance – A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

3. Admiration – Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

4. Alliance – In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

5. Apologize – To lay the foundation for a future offense.

6. Boundary – In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

7. Calamity – Calamities are of two types ~ Misfortune to ourselves and Good fortune to others.

8. Congratulation – The civility of envy.

9. Diagnosis – A physician’s forecast of the disease by the patient’s pulse and purse.

10. Dictionary – A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

11. Discussion – A method of confirming others in their errors.

12. History – An account, mostly false; Of events, mostly unimportant.

13. Houseless – (What one becomes after) Having paid all taxes on household goods.

14. Impartial – Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

15. Incompatibility – In matrimony, a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

16. Intimacy – A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.

17. Lawyer – One skilled in circumvention of the law.

18. Love – A temporary insanity curable by marriage or removal of the patient from the influence under which he incurred the disorder.

19. Man – His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

20. Peace – In international affairs, a period of cheating (in)between two periods of fighting.

21. Pitiful – The state of an enemy of opponent, after an imaginary encounter with oneself.

22. Plan – To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.

23. Responsibility – A detachable burden, easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology, it was customary to unload it upon a star.

24. Revolution – In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

25. Self-evident – Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.

If you have a lot of time to kill or just don’t know what to do, the best thing might be to read the online version of this devil’s dictionary (It can also be downloaded). It might be difficult to skip even a single page 🙂

Destination Infinity

12 thoughts on “Best of – ‘The Devil’s dictionary’

  1. Jas

    some are really hilarious… must be fun to read…

  2. sujatha sathya

    very interesting … and yes some of them are gems 🙂

  3. Sandhya Kumar

    Very very interesting…we can keep it in our mobile and read. I want to re-quote everything and say, ‘this is the best’!

  4. Kismitoffeebar

    Loooooved this one 🙂
    ESP. Diagnosis, man, discussion, responsibility and self evident 🙂

    Cooool post.
    My first time here. Enjoyed reading you !

  5. The British Asian Blog

    These are brilliant, I better memorise these and can verbally share as examples.

  6. Ashwini

    Hilarious! Would love to get my hands on one such.

  7. Nita

    When we were in school, this was one of the punishments for us, reading certain prescribed pages of the dictionary and then being tested for it! 🙂

  8. Ashwathy

    That’s a very interesting take on an old subject 😀

  9. Vaish

    Wow! These are very impressive DI! I have never heard of Devil’s dictionary so far. But am sure going to download and read them! Very witty and funny!

  10. Rahul Aggarwal

    this is such an informative post i’ve archived this in my mailbox…thank you for sharing this…am slowly getting addicted to your blogs now (a complement) !

    regards
    rahul

  11. Reema

    If you chance upon a book of singlets read it! Sniglet is an interesting word and a funny concept popularized by stand-up comedian Rich Hall. “Sniglets are words that don’t appear in the dictionary, but should.”
    for example
    Mustgo – n. Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so long it has become a science project.

    1. Rajesh K

      Interesting. Let me see if I can get it online…

      Destination Infinity

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