The devil's dictionary
By: Ambrose Bierce ; with an introduction by Roy Morris, Jr.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York; Oxford
Language: eng
Number of pages: 219
Subjects: English language -- Dictionaries -- Humor; English language -- Semantics -- Humor; Vocabulary -- Humor
Description: History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. Self-Esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement.

These caustic aphorisms, collected in The Devil's Dictionary, helped earn reporter Ambrose Bierce the epithet's Bitter Bierce, the Devil's Lexicographer, and the Wickedest Man in San Francisco. First published as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and later reissued under its preferred title in 1911, Bierce's notorious collection of barbed definitions forcibly contradicts Samuel Johnson's earlier definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge.