![]() One of the most substantial was written by Harry Ellington Brook, the editor of a humor magazine called The Illustrated San Francisco Wasp. But "The Demon's Dictionary" appeared only once, and Bierce wrote no more satirical lexicons for another six years.Įven so, Bierce's short glossary spawned imitators. His glossary provided 48 short witty definitions, from "A" ("The first letter in every properly constructed alphabet") through "accoucheur". He called it "The Demon's Dictionary", and it appeared in the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser of 11 December 1875. īierce did not make his first start at writing a satirical glossary until six years later. ![]() The first "The Demon's Dictionary" column by Ambrose Bierce, from The San Francisco Newsletter and California Advertiser, 11 December 1875, page 13.īy summer of 1869 he had conceived of the idea of something more substantial: "Could any one but an American humorist ever have conceived the idea of a Comic Dictionary" he wrote. His earliest known definition was published in 1867. ![]() He warmed up by including definitions infrequently in satirical essays, most often in his weekly columns "The Town Crier" or "Prattle". Decades after his death, researchers combed through Flaubert's papers and published the Dictionary under his name in 1913 (two years after Bierce's book The Devil's Dictionary), "But the alphabetful of definitions we have here is compiled from a mass of notes, duplicates and variants that were never even sorted, much less proportioned and polished by the author." Origins and development īierce took decades to write his lexicon of satirical definitions. Gustave Flaubert wrote notes for the Dictionary of Received Ideas (sometimes called Dictionary of Accepted Ideas in French, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues) between 18 but never completed it. Most people assume that Webster's text is unrelieved by humor, but (as Bierce himself was to discover and describe ), Webster made witty comments in a tiny number of definitions. Noah Webster earned fame for his 1806 A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language and his 1828 An American Dictionary of the English Language. ![]() A small handful have witty definitions and became widely quoted, but they were infrequent exceptions to Johnson's learned and serious explanations of word meanings. Johnson's Dictionary defined 42,733 words, almost all seriously. His A Dictionary of the English Language was published 15 April 1755. Prior to Bierce, the best-known writer of amusing definitions was Samuel Johnson. And maybe one of the greatest in all of world literature." It has been called "howlingly funny", and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig said in an interview that The Devil's Dictionary is "probably the most brilliant work of satire written in America. In the 1970s, The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. It has been widely quoted, frequently translated, and often imitated, earning a global reputation. In the decades following, however, the stature of The Devil's Dictionary grew. Initial reception of the book versions was mixed. Bierce's witty definitions were imitated and plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911. The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American journalist Ambrose Bierce, consisting of common words followed by humorous and satirical definitions.
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