THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

by Ambrose Bierce

  GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

  GENTEEL, adj. Refined, after the fashion of a gent.

  Observe with care, my son, the distinction I reveal:

  A gentleman is gentle and a gent genteel.

  Heed not the definitions your "Unabridged" presents,

  For dictionary makers are generally gents.

  G.J.

  GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.

  Habeam, geographer of wide reknown,

  Native of Abu-Keber's ancient town,

  In passing thence along the river Zam

  To the adjacent village of Xelam,

  Bewildered by the multitude of roads,

  Got lost, lived long on migratory toads,

  Then from exposure miserably died,

  And grateful travelers bewailed their guide.

  Henry Haukhorn

  GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth's crust-to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.

  GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

  He saw a ghost.

  It occupied-that dismal thing!-

  The path that he was following.

  Before he'd time to stop and fly,

  An earthquake trifled with the eye

  That saw a ghost.

  He fell as fall the early good;

  Unmoved that awful vision stood.

  The stars that danced before his ken

  He wildly brushed away, and then

  He saw a post.

  Jared Macphester

  Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions somebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may judge from such tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of my own experience.

  There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in his habit as he lived." To believe in him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability, what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost in it? These be riddles of significance. They reach away down and get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.

  GHOUL, n. A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring the dead. The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of controversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world of comforting beliefs than to give it anything good in their place. In 1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with many heads an an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more than one place at a time. The good man was coming away from dinner at the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he would have seized the demon at all hazards. Atholston relates that a ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to think that so distinguished a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.) The water turned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye." The pond has since been bled with a ditch. As late as the beginning of the fourteenth century a ghoul was cornered in the crypt of the cathedral at Amiens and the whole population surrounded the place. Twenty armed men with a priest at their head, bearing a crucifix, entered and captured the ghoul, which, thinking to escape by the stratagem, had transformed itself to the semblance of a well known citizen, but was nevertheless hanged, drawn and quartered in the midst of hideous popular orgies. The citizen whose shape the demon had assumed was so affected by the sinister occurrence that he never again showed himself in Amiens and his fate remains a mystery.

  GLUTTON, n. A person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia.

  GNOME, n. In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral treasures. Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a Silesian mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as 1764.

  GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.

  GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

  A hunter from Kew caught a distant view

  Of a peacefully meditative gnu,

  And he said: "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue

  In its blood at a closer interview."

  But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw

  O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;

  And he said as he flew: "It is well I withdrew

  Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew

  That really meritorious gnu."

  Jarn Leffer

  GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.

  GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.

  GORGON, n.

  The Gorgon was a maiden bold

  Who turned to stone the Greeks of old

  That looked upon her awful brow.

  We dig them out of ruins now,

  And swear that workmanship so bad

  Proves all the ancient sculptors mad.

  GOUT, n. A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.

  GRACES, n. Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing.

  GRAMMAR, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

  GRAPE, n.

  Hail noble fruit!-by Homer sung,

  Anacreon and Khayyam;

  Thy praise is ever on the tongue

  Of better men than I am.

  The lyre in my hand has never swept,

  The song I cannot offer:

  My humbler service pray accept-

  I'll help to kill the scoffer.

  The water-drinkers and the cranks

  Who load their skins with liquor-

  I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks

  And tap the
m with my sticker.

  Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools

  When e'er we let the wine rest.

  Here's death to Prohibition's fools,

  And every kind of vine-pest!

  Jamrach Holobom

  GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.

  GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

  Beside a lonely grave I stood-

  With brambles 'twas encumbered;

  The winds were moaning in the wood,

  Unheard by him who slumbered,

  A rustic standing near, I said:

  "He cannot hear it blowing!"

  "'Course not," said he: "the feller's dead-

  He can't hear nowt [sic] that's going."

  "Too true," I said; "alas, too true-

  No sound his sense can quicken!"

  "Well, mister, wot is that to you?-

  The deadster ain't a-kickin'."

  I knelt and prayed: "O Father, smile

  On him, and mercy show him!"

  That countryman looked on the while,

  And said: "Ye didn't know him."

  Pobeter Dunko

  GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain- the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A.

  GREAT, adj.

  "I'm great," the Lion said-"I reign

  The monarch of the wood and plain!"

  The Elephant replied: "I'm great-

  No quadruped can match my weight!"

  "I'm great-no animal has half

  So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.

  "I'm great," the Kangaroo said-"see

  My femoral muscularity!"

  The 'Possum said: "I'm great-behold,

  My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"

  An Oyster fried was understood

  To say: "I'm great because I'm good!"

  Each reckons greatness to consist

  In that in which he heads the list,

  And Vierick thinks he tops his class

  Because he is the greatest ass.

  Arion Spurl Doke

  GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.

  In his great work on Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution, the learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture -the shrug-among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracing the head inside the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and enforced in my work entitled Hereditary Emotions-lib. II, c. XI) the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.

  GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. Moreover, it has the hearty concurrence of the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture.

  Secretary Wilson became interested in gunpowder through an event that occurred on the Government experimental farm in the District of Columbia. One day, several years ago, a rogue imperfectly reverent of the Secretary's profound attainments and personal character presented him with a sack of gunpowder, representing it as the sed of the Flashawful flabbergastor, a Patagonian cereal of great commercial value, admirably adapted to this climate. The good Secretary was instructed to spill it along in a furrow and afterward inhume it with soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless, then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages, and audibly refusing to be comforted. "Great Scott! what is that?" cried a surveyor's chainman, shading his eyes and gazing at the fading line of agriculturist which bisected his visible horizon. "That," said the surveyor, carelessly glancing at the phenomenon and again centering his attention upon his instrument, "is the Meridian of Washington."

  H

  HABEAS CORPUS. A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.

  HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.

  HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.

  Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell"; but a conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: "Gentlemen, somebody has been razing 'Hell' here!" Years afterward the good prelate's death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.

  HAG, n. An elderly lady whom you do not happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind of baleful lumination or nimbus-hag being the popular name of that peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a "beautiful hag, all smiles," much as Shakespeare said, "sweet wench." It would not now be proper to call your sweetheart a hag-that compliment is reserved for the use of her grandchildren.

  HALF, n. One of two equal parts into which a thing may be divided, or considered as divided. In the fourteenth century a heated discussion arose among theologists and philosophers as to whether Omniscience could part an object into three halves; and the pious Father Aldrovinus publicly prayed in the cathedral at Rouen that God would demonstrate the affirmative of the proposition in some signal and unmistakable way, and particularly (if it should please Him) upon the body of that hardy blasphemer, Manutius Procinus, who maintained the negative. Procinus, however, was spared to die of the bite of a viper.

  HALO, n. Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre, or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.r />
  HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

  HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and intrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakespeare's introducing it into the play of "Othello" is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt, as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coattails in our own day-an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.

  HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of the American States his functions are now performed by an electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity have recently been ordered-the first instance known to this lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging Jerseymen.

  HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

  HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harrangue-outang.

  HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to the fury of the customs.

  HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.

  HASH, x. There is no definition for this word-nobody knows what hash is.

  HATCHET, n. A young axe, known among Indians as a Thomashawk.

  "O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,

  For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.

  The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,