The Devil's Dictionary first appeared, not as a book, but as a column in the San Fransisco based magazine The Wasp.The column would list 15-20 words that would have their definitions redone in a satirical manner. The editor and chief of the magazine, Ambrose Bierce, started writing the various entries for the dictionary in 1881. A total of 88 articles were written by the time Bierce left The Wasp in 1886. In 1887, Bierce took the job as an editor for the Examiner and changed the name of his column to The Cynic's Dictionary. Unfortunately, as the old name was left behind, so too was the column's regularity. The time between columns grew, and no new ones appeared after 1906.
The same year that the column stopped, Bierce published a collection of the definitions under the name The Cynic's Dictionary. This book contained the definitions of 500 words in the first half of the alphabet, A through L. The book didn't regain the older more offensive title of The Devil's Dictionary, until a second volume of was published in 1911 that contained definitions for words from the rest of the alphabet. Bierce claimed that the reason the first volume was called The Cynic's Dictionary was his publisher had religious objections to later, "more reverent" title.
Several examples of the words redone by Bierce are:
- Conservative
- (n.) A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
- Cynic
- (n.) 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.
- Lawyer
- (n.) One skilled in circumvention of the law.
- Religion
- (n.) A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
- Youth
- (n.) The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.
- Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice is never heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost! —Polydore Smith
1. http://www.fun-with-words.com/devils_dictionary.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Dictionary
3. http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/
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