The Devils Dictionary

Large Format for easy reading. Cynical but humorous collection of sardonic aphorisms and epigrams from Ambrose Bierce's famous column 'The Prattler'.

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Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of difficult and potentially ambiguous English words. Rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority compared to "difficult, yet commonly used" words. Rather than supply a single translation, many words are translated for a variety of meanings in Japanese, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of English, and avoid using the notes as a pure translation crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not translated on a page, chances are that it has been translated on a previous page.

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This classic large print title is printed in 16 point Tiresias font as recommended by the Royal National Institute for the Blind

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"The Devil's Dictionary" is often considered Ambrose Bierce's most famous work. Portions of it were published in the "San Francisco Wasp" as a weekly column and in "The Cynic's Word Book" of 1906. Finally published in its entirety in 1911, the definitions found therein are as apt today as they were nearly a century ago. An example: "HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is for advantage of the lawyers."

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Ambrose Bierce's great satirical work, "The Devil's Dictionary" is not a real dictionary, but rather a lampoon of the English language. The definitions provide satirical, witty and often politically pointed representations of the words that is seeks to "define".

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The Devil's Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic's Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve. Meantime, too, some of the enterprising humorists of the country had helped themselves to such parts of the work as served their needs, and many of its definitions, anecdotes, phrases and so forth, had become more or less current in popular speech. This explanation is made, not with any pride of priority in trifles, but in simple denial of possible charges of plagiarism, which is no trifle. In merely resuming his own the author hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed -- enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang.

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Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (born June 24, 1842, Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County, Ohio, USA - date of death uncertain, possibly December 1913 or early 1914, presumably in Mexico) was an American satirist, critic, poet, short story writer, editor, and journalis

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Over 1,000 barbed and brilliant definitions by "the American Swift." Congratulations are "the civility of envy," a historian is a "broad-gauged gossip," many more. H. L. Mencken called these "some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language."

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The Devil's Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881- and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906.' (Excerpt from Author's Preface)

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First published as "The Cynic's Word Book" (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.

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Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of difficult and potentially ambiguous English words. Rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority compared to "difficult, yet commonly used" words. Rather than supply a single translation, many words are translated for a variety of meanings in German, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of English, and avoid using the notes as a pure translation crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not translated on a page, chances are that it has been translated on a previous page.

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"The Devil's Dictionary" was begun in a weekly paper in 1881. In this book, Ambrose Bierce skewers far more than the world of politics, but it is the political realm where Bierce's observations are astonishingly and depressingly relevant a century later.

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The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, is a satirical book published in 1911. It offers reinterpretations of the English language which lampoon cant and political double-talk. The Devil's Dictionary has inspired many imitations both in its day and more recently.

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These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn Ambrose Bierce the epithets Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (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.

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Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of difficult and potentially ambiguous English words. Rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority compared to "difficult, yet commonly used" words. Rather than supply a single translation, many words are translated for a variety of meanings in French, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of English, and avoid using the notes as a pure translation crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not translated on a page, chances are that it has been translated on a previous page.