The Devils Dictionary

ABILITY, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some
small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead
ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly
in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive
quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.


ABSTAINER, n. A weak person who yields to the
temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who
abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity
in the affairs of others.


ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.


ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.


ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.


AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.


AIR, n. A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.


ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of
two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's
pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.


APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence.

ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.


ARISTOCRACY, n. Government by the best men. (In this
sense the word is obsolete; so is that kind of government.) Fellows
that wear downy hats and clean shirts — guilty of education and
suspected of bank accounts.


ARREST, v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.

god made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
—The Unauthorized Version



ASPERSE, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to anothers vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.

AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.


BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband

BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

BERENICE'S HAIR, n. A constellation (Coma Berenices) named in honor of one who sacrificed her hair to save her husband.

Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men — they honored so the dame —
Upon some stars bestowed her name.

But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.


BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.


BRANDY, n. A cordial composed of one part
thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one
part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan. Dose, a
headful all the time. Brandy is said by Dr. Johnson to be the drink of
heroes. Only a hero will venture to drink it.


CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and
unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own
ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and
good fortune to others.


CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before
the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of
differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every
man his own horse." The best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom
and virtues of the horse added the fleetness of man. The scripture
story of the head of John the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan
myths have somewhat sophisticated sacred history.


CIRCUS, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.


CLAIRVOYANT, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead.


CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

CREDITOR, n. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.


CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things
as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the
Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

DANCE, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably
with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds
of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes
have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent,
and warmly loved by the vicious.


DEAD, adj.
Done with the work of breathing; done
With all the world; the mad race run
Though to the end; the golden goal
Attained and found to be a hole!
—Squatol Johnes

DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.


DELUSION, n. The
father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection,
Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and
daughters.

All hail, Delusion! Were it not for thee
The world turned topsy-turvy we should see;
For Vice, respectable with cleanly fancies,
Would fly abandoned Virtue's gross advances.
—Mumfrey Mappel

DESTINY, n. A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure.

DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of the disease by the patient's pulse and purse.

DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.

DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.

DISTRESS, n. A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

EMBALM, v.i. To
cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By
embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between
animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and
populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre
crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same
direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his
neighbor's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of
radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him after awhile
if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose are
languishing for a nibble at his glutoeus maximus.



EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a
determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by
a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.


ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.

EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

To one who, journeying through night and fog,
Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,
Experience, like the rising of the dawn,
Reveals the path that he should not have gone.
—Joel Frad Bink

EXISTENCE, n.

A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,
Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:
From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge
Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: "O fudge!"

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.

An
English sea-captain being asked if he had read "The Exile of Erin,"
replied: "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it." Years
afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of
unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the
ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!

EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

EXECUTIVE, n. An
officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of
the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall
be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect. Following is an
extract from an old book entitled, The Lunarian Astonished — Pfeiffer & Co., Boston, 1803:

LUNARIAN:
Then when your Congress has passed a law it goes directly to the
Supreme Court in order that it may at once be known whether it is
constitutional?

TERRESTRIAN: O no; it does not require the
approval of the Supreme Court until having perhaps been enforced for
many years somebody objects to its operation against himself — I mean
his client. The President, if he approves it, begins to execute it at
once.

LUNARIAN: Ah, the executive power is a part of the
legislative. Do your policemen also have to approve the local
ordinances that they enforce?

TERRESTRIAN: Not yet — at least
not in their character of constables. Generally speaking, though, all
laws require the approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.

LUNARIAN: I see. The death warrant is not valid until signed by the murderer.

TERRESTRIAN: My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so consistent.

LUNARIAN:
But this system of maintaining an expensive judicial machinery to pass
upon the validity of laws only after they have long been executed, and
then only when brought before the court by some private person — does
it not cause great confusion?

TERRESTRIAN: It does.

LUNARIAN:
Why then should not your laws, previously to being executed, be
validated, not by the signature of your President, but by that of the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

TERRESTRIAN: There is no precedent for any such course.

LUNARIAN: Precedent. What is that?

TERRESTRIAN: It has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three volumes each. So how can any one know?

EXCOMMUNICATION, n.

This "excommunication" is a word
In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,
And means the damning, with bell, book and candle,
Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal —
A rite permitting Satan to enslave him
Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.
—Gat Huckle

EXCESS, n. In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate penalties the law of moderation.

Hail, high Excess — especially in wine,
To thee in worship do I bend the knee
Who preach abstemiousness unto me —
My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.
Precept on precept, aye, and line on line,
Could ne'er persuade so sweetly to agree
With reason as thy touch, exact and free,
Upon my forehead and along my spine.
At thy command eschewing pleasure's cup,
With the hot grape I warm no more my wit;
When on thy stool of penitence I sit
I'm quite converted, for I can't get up.
Ungrateful he who afterward would falter
To make new sacrifices at thine altar!

EXCEPTION, n. A
thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class,
as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc. "The exception proves the
rule" is an expression constantly upon the lips of the ignorant, who
parrot it from one another with never a thought of its absurdity. In
the Latin, "Exceptio probat regulam" means that the exception tests the rule, puts it to the proof, not confirms
it. The malefactor who drew the meaning from this excellent dictum and
substituted a contrary one of his own exerted an evil power which
appears to be immortal.

EVERLASTING, adj. Lasting
forever. It is with no small diffidence that I venture to offer this
brief and elementary definition, for I am not unaware of the existence
of a bulky volume by a sometime Bishop of Worcester, entitled, A Partial Definition of the Word "Everlasting," as Used in the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures.
His book was once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church,
and is still, I understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and
profit of the soul.

EVANGELIST, n. A
bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as
assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi.

A
dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what
it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand
have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.

ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.

ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, — exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric,
those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most
profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our
time.

ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

So wide his erudition's mighty span,
He knew Creation's origin and plan
And only came by accident to grief —
He thought, poor man, 'twas right to be a thief.
—Romach Pute

EPITAPH, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example:

Here lie the bones of Parson Platt,
Wise, pious, humble and all that,
Who showed us life as all should live it;
Let that be said — and God forgive it!

EPIGRAM, n. A
short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by
acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the
more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

We know better the needs of ourselves than of others. To serve oneself is economy of administration.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

There are three sexes; males, females and girls.

Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this: they seem to be the unthinking a kind of credibility.

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both his.

EPICURE, n. An
opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that
pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in
gratification from the senses.

EPAULET, n. An
ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the
enemy — that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his
death would give promotion.

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed,
that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in
its habits, and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children.
The fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a
clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately

as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of the

manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his
account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of fairies
visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a peasant, who
had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The son of a
wealthy bourgeois disappeared about the same time, but
afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the
fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers that
so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one change
itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great
slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original
shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain which
the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the wounded
recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was made which
prescribed the death penalty for "Kyllynge, wowndynge, or mamynge" a
fairy, and it was universally respected.