The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce [spicy books to read .TXT] 📗

The giving up of a throne for the purpose of enjoying the discomfiture of a successor. For these several definitions we are indebted to Spanish history.

Poor Isabella’s Dead, whose abdication
Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.
For that performance ’twere unfair to scold her:
She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.
To History she’ll be no royal riddle⁠—
Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.

—⁠G. J. Abdomen

A shrine enclosing the object of man’s sincerest devotion; the temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a halfhearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world’s marketing the race would become graminivorous.

Abduction

In law, a crime; in morals, a punishment.

Abelians

A religious sect of Africa who practiced the virtues of Abel. They were unfortunate in flourishing contemporaneously with the Cainians, and are now extinct.

Aberration

Any deviation in another from one’s own habit of thought, not sufficient in itself to constitute insanity.

Abet

To encourage in crime, as to aid poverty with pennies.

Abhorrence

One of the degrees of disapproval due to what is imperfectly understood.

Abide

To treat with merited indifference the landlord’s notification that he has let his house to a party willin’ to pay.

Ability

That rare quality of mind to which monuments are erected by posterity above the bones of paupers.

The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.

Abject

Innocent of income; without estate; devoid of good clothing.

Abjectly

In the manner of a poor but honest person.

Abjure

To take the preliminary step toward resumption.

Ablative

A certain case of Latin nouns. The ablative absolute is an ancient form of grammatical error much admired by modern scholars.

Abnegation

Renunciation of unprofitable pleasures or painful gains.

Abnormal

Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

Abominable

The quality of another’s opinions.

Aborigines

Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

Considerate persons who will not trouble the lexicographer of the future to describe them.

Abracadabra

By Abracadabra we signify
An infinite number of things.
’Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?
And Whence? and Whither?⁠—a word whereby
The Truth (with the comfort it brings)
Is open to all who grope in night,
Crying for Wisdom’s holy light.

Whether the word is a verb or a noun
Is knowledge beyond my reach.
I only know that ’tis handed down.
From sage to sage,
From age to age⁠—
An immortal part of speech!

Of an ancient man the tale is told
That he lived to be ten centuries old,
In a cave on a mountain side.
(True, he finally died.)
The fame of his wisdom filled the land,
For his head was bald, and you’ll understand
His beard was long and white
And his eyes uncommonly bright.

Philosophers gathered from far and near
To sit at his feet and hear and hear,
Though he never was heard
To utter a word
But “Abracadabra, abracadab,
Abracada, abracad,
Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!”
’Twas all he had,
’Twas all they wanted to hear, and each
Made copious notes of the mystical speech,
Which they published next⁠—
A trickle of text
In a meadow of commentary.
Mighty big books were these,
In number, as leaves of trees;
In learning, remarkable⁠—very!

He’s dead,
As I said,
And the books of the sages have perished,
But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.
In Abracadabra it solemnly rings,
Like an ancient bell that forever swings.
O, I love to hear
That word make clear
Humanity’s General Sense of Things.

—⁠Jamrach Holobom Abridge

To shorten.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

—⁠Oliver Cromwell Abridgement

A brief summary of some person’s literary work, in which those parts that tell against the convictions of the abridger are omitted for want of space.

Abroad

At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.

Abrupt

Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author’s ideas that they were “concatenated without abruption.”

Abruption

Dr. Johnson said of a certain work that the ideas were “concatenated without abruption.” In deference to that great authority we have given the word a place.

Abscond

To be unexpectedly called away to the bedside of a dying relative and miss the return train.

To “move in a mysterious way,” commonly with the property of another.

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond;
The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

—⁠Phela Orm Absence

That which “makes the heart grow fonder”⁠—of absence. Absence of mind is the cerebral condition essential to success in popular preaching. It is sometimes termed lack of sense.

Absent

Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered.

Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.

To men a man is but a mind. Who cares
What face he carries or what form he wears?
But woman’s body is the woman. O,
Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go,
But heed the warning words the sage hath said:
A woman absent is a woman dead.

—⁠Jogo Tyree Absentee

A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove