Devil's Dictionary by A. Bierce  Subscribe E-mail  Words Bookshop  Link to this Site  Take Our Survey  Add to Favorites

BORED? Play our free word gamesINTERACTIVE HANGMAN

Ambrose Bierce was one of nineteenth-century America's most renowned satirists. The author of short stories, essays, fables, poems, and sketches, he was a popular columnist and wrote for several San Francisco and London newspapers during his forty-year journalism career.

Bierce's witty, sardonic definitions in The Devil's Dictionary were originally published in The Wasp, a weekly journal he edited in San Francisco from 1881 to 1886. As a compiled collection, these caustic aphorisms first appeared as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906, and was reissued in 1911 under the author's preferred title of The Devil's Dictionary.

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 are as sharp, amusing, and relevant today.

We have the entire work available for you to browse online (see page index below). If you want to buy a copy of the book, click here. There is an unabridged version available with approximately 600 extra definitions.

Index of Pages Online (Alphabetical)

We have the whole of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary online. The entries are arranged alphabetically on the pages listed below. If you want to buy this book details are at the bottom of the page.

Preface (to 1911 ed.)
Abasement - Abstainer
Accord - Aphorism
Apologize - Avernus
Baal - Befriend
Beg - Blank-Verse
Body-Snatcher - Brute
Caaba - Cat
Caviller - Close-Fisted
Coenobite - Coronation
Corporal - Cynic
Damn - Degenerate
Degradation - Disabuse
Discriminate - Duty
Eat - Eloquence
Elysium - Everlasting
Exception - Extinction
Fairy - Female
Fib - Folly
Fool - Freedom
Freemasons - Future
Gallows - Ghoul
Glutton - Gravitation
Great - Gunpowder
Habeas Corpus - Hash
Hatchet - Heathen
Heaven - Honorable
Hope - Hypocrite
I - Impale
Impartial - Inauspiciously
Income - Inferiae
Infidel - In'ards
Inscription - Interregnum
Intimacy - Itch
J - Justice
K - Koran
Labor - Legacy
Leonine - Limb
Linen - Lord
Lore - Lyre
Mace - Magnitude
Magpie - Meekness
Meerschaum - Monad
Monarch - Mythology
Nectar - November
Oath - Oleaginous
Olympian - Orphan
Orthodox - Oyster
Pain - Perfection
Peripatetic - Pilgrim
Pillory - Positivism
Posterity - Preside
Presidency - Pyrrhonism
Queen - Quotient
Rabble - Redemption
Redress - Repartee
Repentance - Retaliation
Retribution - Righteousness
Rime - Russian
Sabbath - Satire
Satyr - Sceptre
Scimitar - Serial
Severalty - Soul
Soul - Story
Story - Sycophant
Syllogism - Symbolic
T - Theosophy
Tights - Tree
Trial - Tzetze
Ubiquity - Uxoriousness
Valor - Vote
W - Whangdepootenawah
Wheat - Wrath
X
Yankee - Youth
Zanzibari - Zoology

How to Order a Copy of this Book

There are two versions of this book available. First, there is The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, as originally published in 1911. This is identical to the online version on the Fun-With-Words.com website, with almost 1,000 entries.

The second, which we recommend highly, is The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, which has about 1,600 citations.

The Devil's Dictionary The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
Same as 1911 edition
Approx. 1,000 Citations
Extra material: 1,600 Citations
With additional annotation
Buy from Amazon US Buy from Amazon US
Buy from Amazon UK Buy from Amazon UK

Do you know anyone else who would enjoy this? Email this page to a friend.
Also: Sign up for our free web site updates here.

[Top of Page] [Home Page] ©1999-2024 Fun-with-words.com
Recommended Book:
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary ...
Buy this book at Amazon
View all in this category:
General Wordplay Books
Hundreds more books at:
Wordplay Book Store




 
Wild Madagascar on BBC Two
with David Attenborough