THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

by Ambrose Bierce

  Then a person of civic worth,

  Now a fellow to move our mirth.

  Warrior, person, and fellow-no more:

  We must knight our dogs to get any lower.

  Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be,

  Noble Knights of the Golden Flea,

  Knights of the Order of St. Steboy,

  Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy.

  God speed the day when this knighting fad

  Shall go to the dogs and the dogs go mad.

  KORAN, n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.

  L

  LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

  LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.

  A life on the ocean wave,

  A home on the rolling deep,

  For the spark the nature gave

  I have there the right to keep.

  They give me the cat-o'-nine

  Whenever I go ashore.

  Then ho! for the flashing brine-

  I'm a natural commodore!

  Dodle

  LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.

  LAOCOON, n. A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia.

  LAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system-an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's substantial welfare.

  LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.

  Ah, punster, would my lot were cast,

  Where the cobbler is unknown,

  So that I might forget his last

  And hear your own.

  Gargo Repsky

  LAUGHTER, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable. Liability to attacks of laughter is one of the characteristics distinguishing man from the animals- these being not only inaccessible to the provocation of his example, but impregnable to the microbes having original jurisdiction in bestowal of the disease. Whether laughter could be imparted to animals by inoculation from the human patient is a question that has not been answered by experimentation. Dr. Meir Witchell holds that the infection character of laughter is due to the instantaneous fermentation of sputa diffused in a spray. From this peculiarity he names the disorder Convulsio spargens.

  LAUREATE, adj. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office, Robert Southey had the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy and cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense which enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the aspect of a national crime.

  LAUREL, n. The laurus, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had influence at court. (Vide supra.)

  LAW, n.

  Once Law was sitting on the bench,

  And Mercy knelt a-weeping.

  "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!

  Nor come before me creeping.

  Upon your knees if you appear,

  'Tis plain your have no standing here."

  Then Justice came. His Honor cried:

  "Your status?-devil seize you!"

  "Amica curiae," she replied-

  "Friend of the court, so please you."

  "Begone!" he shouted-"there's the door-

  I never saw your face before!"

  G.J.

  LAWFUL, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.

  LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

  LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

  LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers-particularly to those who love not wisely but other men's wives. Lead is also of great service as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.

  Hail, holy Lead!-of human feuds the great

  And universal arbiter; endowed

  With penetration to pierce any cloud

  Fogging the field of controversial hate,

  And with a sift, inevitable, straight,

  Searching precision find the unavowed

  But vital point. Thy judgment, when allowed

  By the chirurgeon, settles the debate.

  O useful metal!-were it not for thee

  We'd grapple one another's ears alway:

  But when we hear thee buzzing like a bee

  We, like old Muhlenberg, "care not to stay."

  And when the quick have run away like pellets

  Jack Satan smelts the dead to make new bullets.

  LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

  LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.

  LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.

  LEONINE, adj. Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:

  The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.

  Cries Pluto, 'twixt his snores: "O tempora! O mores!"

  It should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to teach pronunciation of the Greek and Latin tongues. Leonine verses are so called in honor of a poet named Leo, whom prosodists appear to find a pleasure in believing to have been the first to discover that a rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.

  LETTUCE, n. An herb of the genus Lactuca, "Wherewith," says that pious gastronome, Hengist Pelly, "God has been pleased to reward the good and punish the wicked. For by his inner light the righteous man has discerned a manner of compounding for it a dressing to the appetency whereof a multitude of gustible condiments conspire, being reconciled and ameliorated with profusion of oil, the entire comestible making glad the heart of the godly and causing his face to shine. But the person of spiritual unworth is successfully tempted to the Adversary to eat of lettuce with destitution of oil, mustard, egg, salt and garlic, and with a rascal bath of vinegar polluted with sugar. Wherefore the person of spiritual unworth suffers an intestinal pang of strange complexity and raises the song."

  LEVIATHAN, n. An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (Thaddeus Polandensis) or Polliwig-Maria pseudo-hirsuta. For an exhaustive descr
iption and history of the Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Potter, Thaddeus of Warsaw.

  LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statue. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however desirable its restoration to favor-whereby the process of impoverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary" -although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy preservation-sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion-the lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which his Creator had not created him to create.

  God said: "Let Spirit perish into Form,"

  And lexicographers arose, a swarm!

  Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took,

  And catalogued each garment in a book.

  Now, from her leafy covert when she cries:

  "Give me my clothes and I'll return," they rise

  And scan the list, and say without compassion:

  "Excuse us-they are mostly out of fashion."

  Sigismund Smith

  LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.

  LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

  The rising People, hot and out of breath,

  Roared around the palace: "Liberty or death!"

  "If death will do," the King said, "let me reign;

  You'll have, I'm sure, no reason to complain."

  Martha Braymance

  LICKSPITTLE, n. A useful functionary, not infrequently found editing a newspaper. In his character of editor he is closely allied to the blackmailer by the tie of occasional identity; for in truth the lickspittle is only the blackmailer under another aspect, although the latter is frequently found as an independent species. Lickspittling is more detestable than blackmailing, precisely as the business of a confidence man is more detestable than that of a highway robber; and the parallel maintains itself throughout, for whereas few robbers will cheat, every sneak will plunder if he dare.

  LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.

  "Life's not worth living, and that's the truth,"

  Carelessly caroled the golden youth.

  In manhood still he maintained that view

  And held it more strongly the older he grew.

  When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,

  "Go fetch me a surgeon at once!" cried he.

  Han Soper

  LIGHTHOUSE, n. A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.

  LIMB, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.

  'Twas a pair of boots that the lady bought,

  And the salesman laced them tight

  To a very remarkable height-

  Higher, indeed, than I think he ought-

  Higher than can be right.

  For the Bible declares-but never mind:

  It is hardly fit

  To censure freely and fault to find

  With others for sins that I'm not inclined

  Myself to commit.

  Each has his weakness, and though my own

  Is freedom from every sin,

  It still were unfair to pitch in,

  Discharging the first censorious stone.

  Besides, the truth compels me to say,

  The boots in question were made that way.

  As he drew the lace she made a grimace,

  And blushingly said to him:

  "This boot, I'm sure, is too high to endure,

  It hurts my-hurts my-limb."

  The salesman smiled in a manner mild,

  Like an artless, undesigning child;

  Then, checking himself, to his face he gave

  A look as sorrowful as the grave,

  Though he didn't care two figs

  For her paints and throes,

  As he stroked her toes,

  Remarking with speech and manner just

  Befitting his calling: "Madam, I trust

  That it doesn't hurt your twigs."

  B. Percival Dike

  LINEN, n. "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp."-Calcraft the Hangman.

  LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

  LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

  LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The sentiments and emotions which every literary anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side of human nature, calls it "our hepaticall parte." It was at one time considered the seat of life; hence its name-liver, the thing we live with. The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg pate.

  LL.D. Letters indicating the degree Legumptionorum Doctor, one learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast upon this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly LL.d., and conferred only upon gentlemen distinguished for their wealth. At the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place of the old D.D.-Damnator Diaboli. The new honor will be known as Sanctorum Custus, and written $$c. The name of the Rev. John Satan has been suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who points out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the advantage of a degree.

  LOCK-AND-KEY, n. The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment.

  LODGER, n. A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.

  LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion-thus:

  Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

  Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore-

  Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

  This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

  LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem-a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.

  'Tis said by divers of the scholar-men

  That poor Salmasius died o
f Milton's pen.

  Alas! we cannot know if this is true,

  For reading Milton's wit we perish too.

  LONGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.

  LONGEVITY, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death.

  LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given.

  The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: "Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe!"

  Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves-as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.