Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Biercewas an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. He wrote the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and compiled a satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary. His vehemence as a critic, his motto "Nothing matters", and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work, all earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce"...
burn certain desire field frequently girls letters literary misfortune name neglected observed occupying overlooked popular quality reaping tormented women written
SALACITY, n. A certain literary quality frequently observed in popular novels, especially in those written by women and young girls, who give it another name and think that in introducing it they are occupying a neglected field of letters and reaping an overlooked harvest. If they have the misfortune to live long enough they are tormented with a desire to burn their sheaves.
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PYRRHONISM, n. An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.
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OLYMPIAN, adj. Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his appetite.His name the smirking tourist scrawls Upon Minerva's temple walls, Where thundered once Olympian Zeus, And marks his appetite's abuse. --Averil Joop
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OCCASIONAL, adj. Afflicting us with greater or less frequency. That, however, is not the sense in which the word is used in the phrase "occasional verses," which are verses written for an "occasion," such as an anniversary, a celebration or other event. True, they afflict us a little worse than other sorts of verse, but their name has no reference to irregular recurrence.
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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.
adored chief distance distinct four god insists jupiter mob modern monumental names natives romans sacred shores stand surviving touched whom work worships
ZEUS, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
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PIE, n. An advance agent of the reaper whose name is Indigestion.Cold pie was highly esteemed by the remains. --Rev. Dr. Mucker(in a funeral sermon over a British nobleman)Cold pie is a detestable American comestible. That's why I'm done --or undone -- So far from that dear London.(from the headstone of a British nobleman in Kalamazoo)
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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.
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LODGER, n. A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.
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GOUT, n. A physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient.
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INSCRIPTION, n. Something written on another thing -- mostly memorial, intended to commemorate the fame of some illustrious person and hand down to distant ages . . . e.g., the name of John Smith, penciled on the Washington monument.
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CONVERSATION, n. A fair to the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
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An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
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ENTHUSIASM, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. Byron, who recovered long enough to call it "entuzy-muzy," had a relapse, which carried him off --to Missolonghi.