THE DEVILS DICTIONARY

American satirist AMBROSE GWINNETT BIERCE (1842-c. 1914) began his satirical redefinitions of ordinary words in a weekly newspaper in 1881, and saw them first collected in *The Cynics Word Book* in 1906. But it was with the 1911 republication as *The Devils Dictionary* that he struck comedy gold for the ages with his pointedly mocking and ironic riffs on politics, business, religion, the arts, and American culture at large. From *abasement* (a decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power, peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer) to *zoology* (the science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly), *The Devils Dictionary* remains as witty today as it was a century ago._,