The Devil's Dictionary- by Ambrose Bierce
DICTIONARY, n.
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.
Ambrose Bierce
Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett (1842-1914?)
An American writer and journalist. He
became best known for his realistic war stories and for his tales of horror and the supernatural.
Bierce developed a crisp and precise writing style. The characters in his stories are driven by the lowest instincts.
Many act like animals, with little conscience. The stories show the author's lifelong fascination with cruelty and death.
Bierce's most famous collection of stories is Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891).
From 1881 to 1906, he wrote hundreds of satirical word definitions for a newspaper column.
Many of these definitions were collected in The Cynic's Word Book (1906), later published as The Devil's Dictionary.
Bierce, born in Ohio, fought for the North in the Civil War (1861-1865) and was seriously wounded.
In 1866, Bierce settled in San Francisco, where he became a journalist. In 1897, Bierce moved to Washington, D.C., to become a columnist for the chain of newspapers published by William Randolph Hearst.
Bierce disappeared while on a trip to Mexico, and the circumstances of his death remain unknown.