Unless otherwise specified, all works cited in the notes are by AB. No distinction is made in the notes as to whether the item appeared under AB’s byline or a pseudonym or was unsigned. Dates of first publication are provided when known (note that many of AB’s “essays” in CW are composites made from material written over long periods of time). Page numbers in citations are exact page numbers for direct quotations, first page only for items not quoted. Obvious typographical errors in texts cited have been silently corrected. Minor variations in readings that sometimes occur between appearances in Am and E are not indicated. The misspellings in AB’s Little Johnny sketches are intentional.
Preface, 2.5-II ] The text here derives in part from the prospectus for CW. In C, for “The Devil’s… slang” read:
With reference to certain actual and possible questions of priority and originality, it may be explained that this Word Book was begun in the San Francisco “Wasp” in the year 1881, and has been continued, in a desultory way, in several journals and periodicals. As it was no part of the author’s purpose to define all the words in the language, or even to make a complete alphabetical series, the stopping-place of the book was determined by considerations of bulk. In the event of this volume proving acceptable to that part of the reading public to which in humility it is addressed—enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, good English to slang, and wit to humor—there may possibly be another if the author be spared for the compiling.
2.14 plagiarism ] See note on “Plagiarism,” concerning charges leveled against AB.
2.18 wit ] Cf. “Wit and Humor” (1903; CW 10.101): “Humor is tolerant, tender; its ridicule caresses. Wit stabs, begs pardon—and turns the weapon in the wound.”
2.21 Gassalasca Jape, S.J. ] Jape means to joke or quip; to make sport of. AB introduced Fr. Jape in “The Devil’s Dictionary” for 2 Apr. 1881 as the priest-poet “Gassalaska Jape, S.B.T., of the Mission San Diablo.” He mentioned Fr. Jape again the following week in “Prattle” (W, 9 Apr. 1881: 228), now spelling his first name “Gassalasca” (and publishing an unreprinted poem by Fr. Jape), and in “The Devil’s Dictionary” for 28 Oct. Fr. Jape is not mentioned again until 1906 in the preface to C, now identified as a priest of the Society of Jesus, that is, a Jesuit. AB never again mentions the fictitious order “S.B.T.” or the “Mission San Diablo.” If AB did not know such proverbs as “Whenever two Jesuits come together, the devil always makes three” or “Don’t trust a monk with your wife or a Jesuit with your money,” he certainly knew that Jesuits are highly trained and well educated and was familiar with the stereotype of Jesuits as being deceitful and perfidious—the exact reason for associating Fr. Jape with them. Fr. Jape is credited with thirty-one poems in D, typically the most barbed, and pertaining mostly to religious matters.
Abacot ] A spurious word, originating in a misprint of bycocket (see OED), an ornamental headdress worn by men and women.
Abada ] I.e., the rhinoceros.
Abaddon ] In Revelation 9 : II, Abaddon is the name of “the angel of the bottomless pit.”
Abandon ] Chauncey Mitchell Depew (1834-1928) was a prominent Republican figure in the later nineteenth century. He served as president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad (1885-98) and was U.S. senator from New York (1899-1911) but declined several other prestigious posts, including secretary of state under Benjamin Harrison. AB was skewering Depew in the papers around the time this definition appeared in print.
Abasement ] Am and E add the following verses:
He prevented his displacement
By the practice of abasement;
But what made the wretch exempt
From dismissal was contempt,
For his master couldn’t bring
Himself to kick so base a thing.
Abatis ] Cf. “Fool and Philosopher; or, Brief Seasons of Intellectual Dissipation” (1873; Cobwebs from an Empty Skull 100): “S[oldier].—What is an abattis? F[ool].—Rubbish placed in front of a fort to keep the rubbish outside from getting in the rubbish inside.” See also “War Topics” (E, 5 June 1898: 18): “The front of the enemy’s earthworks was protected by an intricate abatis of felled trees denuded of their foliage and twigs.”
Abat-voix ] From the French: a sounding board above a pulpit. Cf. I Corinthians 13:1: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
Abba ] In the New Testament, Jesus’ familiar name for God the Father; in Christian churches of Egypt, Syria, and Ethiopia, a title of honor for bishops and patriarchs. Note that, in both the secular and ecclesiastical sense, there are fathers who are not husbands.
Abbess ] The superior of a convent (just as an abbot is the superior of a monastery; abbé in France).
Abderian ] Democritus of Abdera (460?-370? BCE) came to be referred to in late antiquity as “The Laughing Philosopher,” perhaps because of his ethical ideal of cheerfulness (euthumie). See “Prattle” (W, 13 Mar. 1886: 5): “A few years ago a ‘chorus of indolent reviewers’ was performing abderian ululations over Mr. Tilden’s word ‘usufruct.’”
Abdest ] The Mohammedan rite of washing the hands before prayer, which also, as AB noted, involves inspiring water through the nose.
Abdication ] Isabella II (1830-1904), queen of Spain (1833-68), died about the time of the publication of definition I. After being ousted from the throne in 1868, she abdicated her rights in 1870 in favor of her son Alfonso XII. In definition 2, AB may be alluding to King Amadeo of Spain, who upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1871 ruled for less than two years, abdicating on II Feb. 1873 and returning to a life of obscurity in Italy, his birthplace. He died there in 1890.
Abdomen ] See “Stomach.”
Abelians ] A small sect of ancient heretics in North Africa who, according to St. Augustine, lived in continence after marriage, supposedly after the example of Abel. In the second century, the Cainites were a heretical sect who professed reverence for Cain and other wicked scriptural characters.
Ablative ] Relating to the grammatical case indicating separation, direction away from, sometimes manner or agency, and the object of certain verbs in Latin and some Indo-European languages. In Latin grammar, the ablative absolute is the “ablative case of a noun with a participle in concord, expressing the time, occasion, or circumstance of a fact stated, as … at, upon, or through the sun rising, darkness flees away” (OED). The adaptation of the ablative absolute in English, as used by AB, especially in his fables, had been good usage in the eighteenth century, but by his day it had come to be considered archaic, even ungrammatical. For an example, see “A Forfeited Right”: “The Chief of the Weather Bureau having predicted a fine day, a Thrifty Person hastened to lay in a large stock of umbrellas …” (1892; CW 6.238). Cf. “The Maid of Podunk” (J, 10 Mar. 1901: 26; as “Ambrose Bierce’s History of the Maid of Podunk,” E, 19 Mar. 1901: 14): “It is not… within the province of the historian to utter dogmatic judgment in such matters, but this seems to be a pretty flagrant instance of ingenuity. I mention it only to show to what lengths the learned will sometimes go in explaining what is obviously a grammatical error (like the ‘ablative absolute’ in Latin). …”
Abracadabra ] A magical incantation or charm (as below) having the power to ward off disease or other calamity; unintelligible talk. See also “Brahma” concerning the Abracadabranese. Jamrach Holobom, described as a professor at the University of Oshkosh (Wisconsin), is the “author” of The Brass-Headed Whale, of the sketch “His Waterloo” (Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, 16 Aug. 1890: 1), of two articles entitled “How Not to Eat” (n.d.), and of the poems “At the Close of the Canvass,” “To the Grove Side,” and “Election Day” (early verses by AB from W that he reprinted in “The Passing Show”), as well as four verse contributions, some epigrams, and a “translation” of the Dies Irae in D. AB developed Holobom more than he did Fr. Jape, who is mentioned but twice in the newspaper, all other attributions to Fr. Jape being in C or D.
Abridge ] The quotation is a parody of the opening of the Declaration of Independence. Its attribution to Cromwell (1599-1658) refers to his execution of King Charles I of England in 1649.
Abrupt ] “[T]he thoughts, which to a reader of less skill seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption.” Samuel Johnson (1709-84), “Cowley,” in Lives of the English Poets (1779-81; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1906), 1.34.
Abruption ] Cf. “Concatenate.”
Abscond ] William Cowper (1731-1800), “Olney Hymns” (1774), 35.1: “God moves in a mysterious way.” The definition in Am and E concludes: “An inelegant synonym for absquatulate.”
Absence ] Propertius, Elegies 2.33.43: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” (Semper in absentes felicior aestus amantes). Cf. “The Passing Show” (Fi, 12 Nov. 1873: 10): “It is reported that the consort of Don Carlos has received an official intimation that her absence from France would make the French heart grow fonder of her.”
Absent ] See AB to Eleanor (Vore) Sickler, 19 Nov. 1910: “I have always found you interesting, despite my favorite dictum that ‘a woman absent is a woman dead’” (“A Collection of Bierce Letters,” ed. Carey McWilliams, University of California Chronicle 34 [Jan. 1932]: 43).
Absolute ] Cf. “Letters from a Hdkhoite—No. 1” (NL, 4 Apr. 1868: 4): “The government of Hdkho is what you call an absolute monarchy; which I understand to mean, a state in which the king may do as he thinks fit, so long as his ministers and army think fit also.” AB was a longtime foe of republican government; his most sustained attack on it is found in the satire “Ashes of the Beacon” (1888 [as “The Fall of the Republic”]; rpt. 1905, 1909; CW 1.17).
Abuse ] Definition 2 applies to the common perception of AB’s satire. See also “Vituperation.”
Academe ] Presumably the academy founded by Plato in 387 BCE. He and his pupils met in a garden outside Athens that was said to have belonged to the Trojan War hero Academos.
Accept ] Cf. Hosea 8: 7: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. …”
Accident ] The definition suggests AB’s adherence to determinism. Cf. “One of the Missing” (1888): “But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was not to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the Confederate retreat to be announced by him. For countless ages events had been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some parts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the acts which he had in will would have barred the harmony of the pattern. … By the concurrence of an infinite number of favoring influences and their preponderance over an infinite number of opposing ones, this officer of artillery had been made to commit a breach of discipline and flee from his native country to avoid punishment” (CW 2.76-77).
Accomplice ] AB treats the issue of lawyers defending clients they know to be guilty in “The Jury in Ancient America” (1905; rpt. 1909 as part of “Ashes of the Beacon”) and “Some Features of the Law” (CW 11.99).
Accoucheur ] One who assists in childbirth.
Accountability ] The first name of “The Widower Turmore” (1891; CW 8.41) is Joram. In Am and E, for “caution” read “remorse and great first cause of penitence.”
Aceldama ] A potter’s field near Jerusalem purchased with the reward Judas received for betraying Jesus and later returned (see Acts I: 17-19).
Acephalous ] Headless. In W, for “absently pulled at his forelock” read “attempted to blow his nose with his fingers”; there is also an additional sentence at the end: “The final and permanent state of a modern sovereign who rules by right divine.” Jean, Sire de Joinville (1224?-1317), a member of the Seventh Crusade, wrote a chronicle of the Crusades in his Histoire de Saint Louis (1304-09). The anecdote first published at “Head” and later at “Scimitar” expands on the quip made here.
Acerbity ] AB often attacked George K. Fitch (1826-1906), deacon and also editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, as in “A Vision of Resurrection” (1889; CW 5.116).
Ache ] See “Conscience” concerning the distress caused by the cucumber.
Acorn ] Cf. “Prattle” (W, 23 Jan. 1886: 5): “It seems to be the prevailing opinion that if Germany holds on to the Samoan Islands an acorn should be planted at once to produce the keel of a first-class man-of-war.”
Acquit ] Cf. “My Favorite Murder” (1888; CW 8.147): “In charging the jury, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked that it was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to explain away.”
Acrobat ] “a, priv.” refers to the alpha privative, the prefix a- or an- used in Greek or words derived from Greek to express absence or negation. Thus the healthy acrobat is the opposite of “crow-bait,” a corpse.
Acrostic ] A poem in which certain letters (usually the first in each line) form a name or message when read in sequence. AB declared, “No acrostic is worth writing …” (“Prattle,” E, I Dec. 1895: 6) but was himself guilty of at least one—the untitled poem beginning “Fate—whose edict oft hath wrung” (1864) on his pet name for his fiancée at the time, “Fatima” Wright (see Carey McWilliams, “Ambrose Bierce and His First Love: An Idyll of the Civil War,” Bookman 75 [June-July 1932]: 257).
Actor ] AB expressed frequent disdain at the supposed immorality of actors and actresses. Cf. “Small Contributions” (Co, Feb. 1909: 360): “it would be something of a shock to the actor folk to learn that we are not looking to them for instruction in the art of being good.”
Actress ] See also B15 in the Appendix.
Adage ] AB wrote a series of fables entitled “Old Saws with New Teeth” (CW 6.363).
Adamant ] Solicitate mimics salycilate, a salt or an ester of salicylic acid, which is a preservative and is used in making aspirin. To solicit can mean to approach someone with an offer of sexual services in return for payment.
Adder ] AB makes a similar joke about the adder in “Kings of Beasts: The Snake” (1902; CW 12.44): “But the snake [addressing Adam in the Garden of Eden], it spoke up and sed, the snake did: ‘If you please, sir, Ime willing to go 4th, but I cant multiply. Ime a adder.’”
Adipose ] Cf. “Carmelite,” line 6 of the verse: “Ragged and fat and as saucy as sin.”
Adjutant ] Adjutant officers appear in several of AB’s Civil War stories (CW 2): “The Affair at Coulter’s Notch” (1889; p. 105), “Parker Adderson, Philosopher” (1891; p. 133), “The Story of a Conscience” (1890; p. 165), and “One Kind of Officer” (1893; p. 178); also “A Major’s Tale” (1890; CW 8.63).
Administration ] Cf. “Corporation.”
Admonition ]Judibras fuses the names of Judas Iscariot and Hudibras (1663, 1674, 1680), the satiric epic by Samuel Butler (1613-80). The verses here (and most others attributed to Judibras) are hudibrastic, as is Butler’s mock-heroic satirical poem, written in octosyllabic couplets.
Adonis ] A strikingly beautiful youth loved by both Persephone and Aphrodite (Venus), the latter of whom bore him a son and a daughter. After he was torn to pieces by a wild boar before Aphrodite’s eyes (for his presumed unkindness), both goddesses claimed him. Zeus decreed that he spend half the year above ground with Aphrodite, the other half in the underworld with Persephone.
Affection ] “An abnormal state of body; malady, disease” (OED).
Affliction ] AB frequently used the phrase “another and bitter world” (i.e., hell) to mock the phrase “another and better world,” a popular reference to paradise in the hereafter. In W, the definition reads:
The acclimatizing process whereby the soul is fitted for another and a warmer world. A method of breaking it to us gently.
Affliction sore long time he bore,
Physicians was in vain.
Etta Wheeler.
Agrarian ] Aeneas was the son of Anchises and Aphrodite. AB’s allusion is to Vergil’s Aeneid 2.804, where Aeneas carries Anchises on his back as they flee Troy.
Album ] Just as Jesus was crucified between two thieves (Mark 15:27).
Alcohol ] Alcohol originally referred to a fine metallic powder (usually antimony or stibnite) used to stain the eyelids, as in “On with the Dance!” (1880; CW 8.298); now the intoxicating element in fermented and distilled beverages.
Allah ] The quatrain is patterned after that of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and in W it is attributed to Khayyam.
Allegiance ] W concludes: “The traditional bond of duty between the taxer and the taxee. It is not reversible.”
Alligator ] The reference to Herodotus is to Histories 4.45, where he notes that the Indus is the only river aside from the Nile where crocodiles are found. AB repeated the pun about the “sawrian” numerous times in his Little Johnny sketches.
Alone ] In W, for Booley Fito read Dr. Kalloch. Isaac Smith Kalloch (1832-90) was both a Baptist minister and mayor of San Francisco (1879-82). During his stormy administration Kalloch was shot and wounded by Charles de Young, publisher of the Chronicle. In retaliation, Kalloch’s son later shot and killed de Young but was acquitted of murder.
Amazon ] A member of a nation of women warriors reputed to have lived in Scythia and to have removed the right breast for greater ease in using the bow; hence, any tall or aggressive or strong-willed woman. AB was much opposed to “women’s rights and equality of the sexes.” His admiration of Amazons and hatred of women’s rights activists can be seen in “Prattle” (W, 11 Nov. 1881: 307): “A contemporary alludes to Mrs. Stow’s disreputable following of malefactresses as ‘Amazons.’ I confess my inability to discern in what respect these withered harridans, with their cracked and disobedient voices and their abundant angles—feeble and foolish in mind, tough and tendinous in body—resemble the splendid creatures who battled with the Centaurs. The comparison is stupid. It is insulting. By Jove, it is flat blasphemy.”
Ambition ] In W, for “vilified … dead” read “abused by the newspapers during life, and have an epitaph by Hector A. Stuart after death.” AB relentlessly attacked the poetry of local bard Hector A. Stuart, author of A Vesper Bell (1869) and Ben Nebo: A Pilgrimage in the South Seas (1871). See also AI in the Appendix.
Animal ] AB refers to the absurd belief that God thoughtfully provides for all His creatures, ignoring the fact that all creatures are sustained only by the loss of life of other creatures or plants. He tirelessly lampooned this notion in his Little Johnny sketches, for example, “Kings of Beasts: Domestical Hens”: “Mister Jonnice … he says it was mighty thoughtful in the Creator to provide chickens for the hawks, but Uncle Ned he says it wasn’t quite so thoughtful in him to provide hawks for the chickens” (CW 12.94). See “Air,” “Bounty,” and “Insectivora.”
Animalism ] Animals are the “beasts that perish,” unlike human beings, who, in Christian belief, live on in the hereafter. Cf. Psalms 49:12: “Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.”
Antiquity ] The quotation is from Shakespeare, Sonnets 62.10.
Aphorism ] The verses at “Diary” are also from The Mad Philosopher (presumably a fictitious verse drama or poem). AB mentions a mad philosopher at “Reality.” In W and C, the definition reads: “A brief statement, bald in style and flat in sense.”
Appetite ] “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
Applause ] The definition in W reads:
The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool.
There was a young reader who thundered
And lightened, and “rode the Six Hundred!”
But he got no applause
For his effort, because
His trowsers it sadly had sundered.
T-r-sa C-rl-tt.
AB alludes to San Francisco poet Theresa Corlett, whose work he frequently attacked.
Apron ] The verses parody the last stanza of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751) by Thomas Gray (1716-71):
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
See “Elegy” for another parody of Gray’s poem.
Arbitration ] In “Prattle” (E, 12 May 1895: 6), AB described arbitration as “that first and last hope of the feeble freebooter. …”
Archbishop ] AB penned a similar rhyme in “Prattle” (E, 9 Feb. 1890: 6), which he attributed to William Ingraham Kip (1811-93), first bishop of the Episcopal Church of California:
By help of my Assistant Bishop,
More souls from sin I hope to fish up,
And Nick with hotter sauce to dish up.
Architect ] In W and C, the definition concludes: “who estimates the whole cost, and himself costs the whole estimate.”
Ardor ] AB refers to the Amores (love poems) of Ovid (43 BCE-18 CE). W adds the following verses:
He loved her with an ardor —
Such a hot one,
That her father had to guard her
With a shotgun.
Ovid.
Argonaut ] Ar was a San Francisco newspaper for which AB wrote from 1877 to 1880. Its founder and editor, Frank M. Pixley (1824-95), was notoriously anti-Catholic. AB satirized that hatred in “The Subdued Editor” (1890; CW 5.134), addressed to Pixley.
Aristocracy ] W adds: “Down wid arishtocrats! —D. Kearney.” For Kearney, see “Sandlotter.”
Arrayed ] In W, for “as a rioter… lamp-post” read:
(Come to think of it, that definition describes with tolerable accuracy the condition of a rioter hung to a lamp-post.)
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Charles Warren Stoddard.
Charles Warren Stoddard (1843-1909) was an important literary figure in San Francisco for forty years, a coeditor of Overland Monthly, and a friend of AB. His works include Poems (1867), South-Sea Idyls (1873), and The Lepers of Molokai (1886).
Arrest ] The King James Bible, the English translation from Hebrew and Greek published in 1611, was known as the “Authorized Version.” One might expect that Satan would have a hand in an “Unauthorized Version.” Cf. “Sabbath”; also “Kings of Beasts: Fish” (1878; CW 12.162): “… God made us all in 6 days and was arrested on the 7th.”
Arsenic ] A highly poisonous metallic element used in insecticides. Women once consumed arsenic in very small doses because it was believed to make the skin desirably pale.
Art ] A cate is a delicacy.
Asbestos ] Cf. “Prattle” (Ar, 25 Aug. 1877: 5): “Asbestos is now being woven into a fabric suitable for clothing, which is absolutely fire-proof. Good stuff for shrouds.”
Ass ] “Mr. Pixley … [u]nfortunately … cannot sing; like the Washoe canary (Asinus Geigerii) he has a good voice, but no ear” (“Prattle,” E, 24 July 1887: 4). Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius (fl. c. 400 CE) was an ancient philosopher and critic, best known for his Saturnalia (an academic symposium in seven books) and his commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis. Ramasilus and Stantatus are fictitious, W concludes with two additional lines:
To thine ears’ length mayest thou enjoy life’s span,
In fathership with Mule and fellowship with Man!
See also “Griffin.”
Avernus ] The ancient name for Averno, a small crater lake of southern Italy near the Tyrrhenian Sea. Regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld because of its (formerly) gloomy aspect and intense sulfuric vapors. The expression facilis descensus Averni (the descent to Avernus [is] easy) is found in Vergil, Aeneid 6.126. Scrutator is fictitious. L. Caelius Firmianus Lactantius (240?-320?) was a Christian theologian and philosopher.
Baal ] Baal was any of various fertility gods of the ancient Semitic people considered by the Hebrews to be false idols. Beelzebub is one of the many names for Satan. Berosus, or Berossus, was a Babylonian priest of the third century BCE. He wrote Babyloniaca to elucidate Babylonian creation myths to the Hellenistic Greeks. The work exists only in fragments, but Book II contains an account of a prehistoric flood analogous to that found in the Bible. See Stanley Mayer Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1978). Berosus is also mentioned in “Prattle” (W, 19 Mar. 1881: 180). AB refers to the stomach as a god at “Abdomen,” “Excess,” and “Soul.” A “Mr. Guttle” is one of two fictitious gastronomes mentioned in “A Sole Survivor” (1890; CW 1.401).
Babe or Baby ] The story of Osiris also appears in “Replies to Correspondents” (Fu, 20 June 1874:19).
Bacchus ] Jorace is a parody of the Roman poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus [65-8 BCE]), referring specifically to the various tributes to Bacchus (and to drinking) found in his odes and epodes.
Back-slide ] To backslide is, in religious practice, to revert to sin. Cf. “The Baptism of Dobsho” (1874; CW 8.98): “I fear we must let matters take the usual course, trusting to our later efforts to prevent the backsliding which may result.”
Bait ] W adds the following verses:
Sweet Rosa Fenn,
Adored of men,
“You’d been,” said he,
“As old as me,
Had you so long not tarried
In heaven.” Said Rose:
“The good Lord knows
Impatiently I waited;
But ere they threw
Me down to you
I had to be well baited.”
Beauty and the Beast.
Baptism ] See also “The Baptism of Dobsho.”
Barber ] The root meaning of the Greek word barbaros is “non-Greek-speaking” (i.e., one whose speech was incomprehensible to the Greeks, sounding to them like “bar-barbar…”).
Bark ] The line “all writers quote” is presumably from “To Thomas Moore” (1817) by Lord Byron (1788-1824): “My boat is on the shore, / And my bark is on the sea …” See also note on “Bow-wow.”
Basilisk ] AB’s earliest known published work is the poem “Basilica” (1867), addressed to the basilisk.
Bassinet ] The word is in fact derived from the Old French bacinet (diminutive of bacin, basin). Berceaunette is AB’s coined diminutive of berceau (cradle).
Bassoon ] A bassoon is, of course, a woodwind instrument, not brass. AB makes a pun on brazen as meaning to have a loud, harsh, resonant sound. See also “Clarionet,” “Calliope,” and “Flute.”
Basso-relievo ] More commonly rendered in English as bas-relief.
Bastinado ] Actually, to beat the soles of the feet with a stick or cudgel.
Bath ] In W, there is an added sentence: “Its daily performance is attended with good results, but it is likely to be fatal when celebrated annually.” A bath has indeterminate spiritual efficacy, unlike baptism, although they are outwardly similar.
Bear ] An investor who sells securities or commodities in expectation of falling prices.
Beauty ] See also B2 in the Appendix.
Bedlam ] The quotation is from Shakespeare, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream 5.1.8. Bedlam, now meaning a place of noisy uproar and confusion, once referred to an insane asylum, specifically, the contracted name of the Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem for the mentally ill in London (see “Magdalene”).
Beg ] The verses here originally appeared in “Prattle” (E, 11 Apr. 1897: 6), although that appearance used the proper name “Monaghan” in place of “mendicant.”
Beggary ] The joke here was somewhat lost on readers of W, because the word Beggar had appeared in the previous week’s installment of “The Devil’s Dictionary.”
Behavior ] The Dies Irae is a medieval hymn describing Judgment Day, sung in some masses for the dead. AB claimed to have undertaken his own “translation” of the Dies Irae (printed in its entirety in Shapes of Clay) because of his disappointment with the translation by Gen. John A. Dix. Yet AB once stated in print that Dix “was the author of one of the noblest translations of the Dies Ire” (“Prattle,” Ar, 10 May 1879: 4). See AB to Herman Scheffauer (16 June 1903; transcript, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley): “The ‘Dies Iræ’ is the most earnest and sincere of religious poems; my travesty of it is mere solemn fooling, which fact is ‘given away’ in the prose introduction, where I speak of my version being of possible service in the church! The travesty is not altogether unfair—it was inevitably suggested by the author’s obvious inaccessibility to humor and logic—a peculiarity that is, however, observable in all religious literature, for it is a fundamental necessity to the religious mind. Without logic and a sense of the ludicrous a man is religious as certainly as without webbed feet a bird has the land habit.” Cf. AB’s reading of the second line of the stanza printed here: “Mine the playful hand that gave your …” (CW 4.323). A less irreverent reading of the entire stanza is: “Remember, merciful Jesus, / that I am the cause of your journey, / lest thou lose me in that day.”
Belladonna ] A poisonous Eurasian herb (Atropa belladonna), also known as deadly nightshade. An alkaloidal extract derived from the plant is used in medicine.
Benedictines ] A Benedictine is a monk (not a friar) or nun belonging to the order founded c. 529 by St. Benedict of Nursia that stressed moderation rather than austerity. Black friars actually are members of the Dominican order, founded at the beginning of the thirteenth century by St. Dominic; the term refers to the color of their dress.
Benevolence ] The definition is elaborated in the fable “The Dutiful Son” (1892; CW 6.298).
Berenice’s Hair ] A constellation in the northern sky near Boötes and Leo, containing the north pole of the Milky Way. Berenice was a queen of Egypt who promised her hair to Venus if her husband, Ptolemy III, returned safe from a campaign in Syria. When the hair was found to be missing from the temple where it had been dedicated, it was identified with the newly discovered constellation.
Bigamy ] Cf. WR 19: “For lack of a suitable verb we just sometimes say committed this or that, as in the instance of bigamy, for the verb to bigam is a blessing that is still in store for us.” Only in AB’s Little Johnny tales is “bigam” used as a verb, and then for humorous effect; AB similarly used the word “polygam” as a verb (see also A19 in the Appendix).
Billingsgate ] Foul, abusive language, named after a former fish market in London. Blackguard ] Cf. “Cynic.”
Blank-verse ] In W, the definition concludes with the sentence: “Of all English and American poets not a half-dozen have been able to write good blank-verse; and the six hundred Californian poets are not among them.” AB himself eschewed blank verse—unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. He considered himself a satirist, not a poet, and claimed that only three living poets could write it well. In correspondence with the poet George Sterling (1869-1926), AB wrote that blank verse “seems to me suitable (in serious verse) only to lofty, not lowly, themes. … I always expect something pretty high when I begin [to read] an unknown poem in blank” (AB to George Sterling, 28 Sept. 1906; ALS, NYPL).
Blubber ] AB mentioned John B. Felton (1827-77), a member of the California Legislature and mayoral candidate in Oakland in 1869, in several “Town Crier” columns.
Blue-stocking ] A blue-stocking is a woman with strong scholarly or literary interests, after the Blue Stocking Society, the nickname for a predominantly female literary club of eighteenth-century London.
Body-snatcher ] The story “One Summer Night” (1906; CW 3.58) is about grave robbing for medical purposes. See also “Hyena” re body-snatchers.
Bologna-sausage ] In his Little Johnny sketches, AB often suggested that the contents of sausage were best not known.
Bottle ] Panurge is a character in Gargantua et Pantagruel (1532-34) by Rabelais (1494?– 1553?). AB refers to the lengthy episode, occupying the whole of books 4 and 5, in which Panurge seeks the advice of the Oracle of the Holy Bottle as to whether he should marry. “Crapuli” derives from crapulent, “suffering from excessive drinking, eating, etc.” (OED). “Amphoristic” is a pun on amphora, a Greek two-handled jar with a narrow neck used to carry wine or oil.
Boundary ] In W, the definition concludes: “Among the ancients the god of boundaries was Terminus, and it was customary to set up busts of him (Termini) as corner-stones. This is noted as an illustration of how the unconscious hoodlum and the gentle ignoramus come to talk the learned languages.”
Bounty ] Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87) was a clergyman, newspaper editor, and abolitionist whom AB frequently attacked. See “Animal.”
Bow-wow ] Peruvian bark refers to the dried bark of the cinchona, a tree or bush of the genus Cinchona, native to the Andes and cultivated for its bark, which yields quinine and quinidine, used to treat malaria. Also known as Jesuit’s bark.
Brahma ] In Hinduism, the creator god (not only of Hindus). AB makes a veiled allusion to the Holy Trinity of Christianity.
Brain ] See also “Cartesian.”
Brandy ] “On Wednesday, Apr. 7 [, 1779], I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s. … Johnson harangued upon the qualities of different liquors; … [he] said, ‘Poor stuff! No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling,) must drink brandy’” (Boswell, Life of Johnson [1791; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1970], 1016). AB attributes the statement by Dr. Johnson to Emerson in W, to Carlyle in C.
Buddhism ] Rev. Horatio Stebbins (1821-1902), minister of the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco from 1864 to 1902, about whom AB wrote favorably at first but later attacked in his columns. He conducted AB’s marriage ceremony on 25 Dec. 1871.
Caaba ] Usually Kaaba, a Muslim shrine in Mecca toward which the faithful turn to pray. It is a small building within the Great Mosque, built to enclose the Black Stone, the most venerated Muslim object. In W, the last sentence reads, “People who doubt are shown the stone.”
Cabbage ] The word cabbage derives from a Middle English word meaning head (probably from the Latin caput). Cabagius is fictitious. See “Prattle” (Ar, 21 July 1877: 5): “Mr. Owen is not much of an editor, but like a cabbage or a drum, he has an excellent head for business”; and “Tales of Two Kings” (Am, 14 Jan. 1906: 24; E, 21 Jan. 1906: 44): “The responchible hed of the cabinet is always a cabbidge.” See also “Zenith.”
Cackle ] When AB compiled D, he omitted the definition for “Cackle” that had appeared in C and instead wrote the new definition “Vanity” (q.v.), where he used the verses formerly published here.
Cairn ] A cairn is a mound of stones erected as a marker or memorial. It may be erected over a grave, but it does not itself contain a body. Dr. Berosus Huggyns is described as an Egyptologist at “Tomb.” He is also a character (as “Huggins”) in “Curried Cow” (1874; CW 8.76), although that story does not take place in the sixteenth century.
Calamity ] In W, for “misfortune … others” read “private and national. The first consists of misfortune to ourselves, the second of good fortune to our enemies, the latter being the harder to endure.”
Calliope ] The Muse of epic poetry (pronounced kə-lī’ə-pē’); AB also refers to the musical instrument (in this case, often mispronounced kăl’-ē-ōp’). See “My Muse” (Fu, 28 Feb. 1874: 88): “A Calliope, I may explain, is simply a ‘peal’ of steam-whistles, with a key-board, and is operated in the manner of a piano. It is hardly a thing that the muse whose name it bears would have been proud of, but it makes a good deal of noise if the boiler is strong enough to generate sufficient steam, and under skilful fingers will hoot out a number of tunes.” The story contains two examples in verse of the alternate pronunciations of calliope:
… the next issues of the Bullrush Bugle and the Hardbake Eagle contained a poem each on the Calliope. This can be regarded only as a coincidence, for the initial couplets contain internal evidence that they are not the work of the same hand. The Bullrushian effusion begins thus: —
Deceitful baffler of our hope,
O evanescent Calliope!
The Hardbackian bard begins less plaintively, but with a stronger indignation, thus: —
The ruin thou’st wrought may it also seize thee,
Thou fiendish, remorseless old Calliope!
Callous ] Zeno of Citium (335?-263? BCE) was the founder of the Stoic school.
Calumnus ] Calumny is the malicious utterance of a false statement to injure another’s reputation. AB alludes to the play A School for Scandal (1777) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) but more generally to the malicious gossip found throughout that play and, by implication, throughout upper-class society.
Calvary ] Salmi Morse, editor of W, was publishing his “Wasp’s Improved Webster” in W just before AB’s “The Devil’s Dictionary” began to appear there. Morse had written a “passion play,” a dramatic representation of the Passion of Jesus. An unsigned squib in W (2 Dec. 1882: 755) about the play said: “They are to have the Passion Play in New York at last. Salmi Morse, the indefatigable maniac whose brain evolved its tangled and incomprehensible lines, has at last conceived a plan by which the courts and the newspapers can be appeased and the piece presented.” O’Neill appears to have been an unfortunate actor performing in what was not a very good play. AB’s “Prattle” (Ar, 19 Apr. 1879: 5) contains a mock “Passion Play.”
Camel ] AB’s quasi-Latinate taxonomy means “splay-footed hump-back.” The “improper” camel—the single-humped Arabian camel, or dromedary —is the kind most often exhibited in circuses, whereas the two-humped Bactrian camel of central Asia is not.
Candidate ] The word derives from the Latin candidatus, originally meaning “clothed in white” (i.e., wearing a white toga). The writer Edward Townsend (1855-1942), author of “Chimmie Fadden”; Major Max; and Other Stories (1895), was a friend of AB.
Cane ] See “Prattle” (Ar, 5 May 1877: 5): “Senor Herath, the Costa Rican Minister at Washington, had a diplomatic controversy with a hackman, whom, finally, he assured of his distinguished consideration by hitting him hard on the head with a cane.” Concerning AB’s final meeting with his erstwhile collaborator, Gustav Adolphe Danziger, George Sterling wrote: “Danziger was the person over whose head Bierce broke his cane to fragments” (“Introduction,” In the Midst of Life [New York: Modern Library, 1927], x).
Cannibal ] See “Heart” re Delectatio Demonorum. W and C contain the following additional paragraph: “The practice of cannibalism once was universal, as the smallest knowledge of philology will serve to show. ‘Oblige us,’ says the erudite author of the Delectatio Demonorum, ‘by considering the derivation of the word “sarcophagus,” and see if it be not suggestive of potted meats. Observe the significance of the phrase “sweet sixteen.” What a world of meaning lurks in the expression “she is sweet as a peach,” and how suggestive of luncheon are the words “tender youth”! A kiss is but a modified bite, and when a young girl insists on making a “strawberry mark” on the back of your hand she only gives way to an inherited instinct that she has not learned to control. The fond mother, when she rapturously avers that her babe is “almost good enough to eat,” merely shows that she is herself only a trifle too good to eat it.’”
Canonicals ] The dress prescribed by canon for officiating clergy.
Canonize ] See also “Saint.”
Capital ] For AB’s views on capital punishment, see “The Death Penalty” (CW 11.210).
Carmelite ] As noted, an order of mendicant friars of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, founded c. 1154 by St. Berthold and reorganized as mendicant friars after the Crusades by St. Simon Stock; known as white friars (see “Friar”). In the sixteenth century, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross undertook to reform their Carmelite orders.
Cartesian ] Relating to the philosophy or methods of René Descartes (1596-1650). His famous dictum appears in Discourse on Method (1637). AB’s Latin should have read Cogito cogitare ergo cogito esse.
Cat ] In AB’s Little Johnny sketches, Johnny’s father frequently kicks Mose, the family cat, as in the situation described here. Elevenson, a play on Alfred, Lord Tennyson (180992), the Victorian poet, is a late change, the first attribution in W being to Sands W. Forman, one of many bad poets attacked by AB.
Catechism ] A catechism is a book that briefly summarizes the basic principles of Christianity in question-and-answer form. AB’s columns—especially in W—contain extracts from absurd “catechisms” on politics and other subjects. In ND under “Sacred Themes,” he calls The Calvary Catechism “a book of riddles” (p. 113).
Cemetery ] W adds the following verses:
Though strate and narrow is the tomb,
In heaven there is plenty romb.
He suffered long and died phthisic,
In spite of all the doctor’s thphysic.
Cenotaph ] AB repeats the verses here in “The Passing Show” (Am and E, 18 Feb. 1900: 26). A variant appears in “Prattle” (Ar, 29 June 1878: 9): “Here lies the bodies of our dear Tommy and Sally: / One resting here and the other in Grass Valley.”
Censor ] As noted, the censor was one of two officials in ancient Rome responsible not only for supervising public behavior and morals but also for taking the public census.
Centaur ] A centaur had the head, arms, and trunk of a man and the body and legs of a horse. Chiron was a wise physician and prophet whose pupils included Achilles, Asclepius, Hercules, and Jason. When he suffered an incurable wound, he gave his immortality to Prometheus. Zeus turned Chiron into the constellation Sagittarius. Cf. Mark 6:25: “And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist.” In this sense, a charger is a large, shallow dish, a platter. See also “Prattle” (E, 24 Nov. 1889: 6), where AB mocked a writer in another paper who had written of a military man, “He bestrode his horse like a centaur”: “Nobody ever saw a regular soldier bestride his horse ‘like a centaur.’ A centaur on horseback would be a terrifying spectacle: it would make the shade of old Chiron shy worse than a tricksy colt. It is possible that the Oregonian man has forgotten just what a centaur was like—it is so long since there were any. The latest one of which we have any account was John the Baptist’s head on a charger.”
Chemise ] A woman’s loose, shirtlike undergarment or a loosely fitting dress or shift, sometimes worn with a belt. See “Hug” and “Kiss.”
Chinaman ] AB’s lifelong defense of Chinese immigrants (“coolies”) made him very unpopular in California.
Chiromancer ] A palm-reader. AB continually railed against clairvoyants, palm-readers, astrologers, and other quacks but vilified their dupes equally. See “Clairvoyant.”
Chivalry ] See “Prattle” (W, 5 Aug. 1881: 83): “A Bulletin reporter is good enough to give us, as the latest joke on the street, that hoary pleasantry about the two wings of the Democracy being called the Chivalry and the Shovelry; and another forehanded writer in the same paper attempts to make it stick with an editorial builded for the purpose of lugging it in. Why, my dear fellows, the creature of that joke has turned up his toes, and in the top of the mighty tree that has grown up from his grave, ‘the century-living crow’ that was nestled in its branches is bleaching milk-white with age.”
Christen ] To baptize into a Christian church, and thus to give a name at baptism. AB felt that he had been inflicted as described in D. See AB to George Sterling (15 Feb. 1911; ALS, NYPL): “My name is Bierce, and I find, on reflection, that I like best those who call me just that. If my christen name were George I’d want to be called that; but ‘Ambrose’ is fit only for mouths of women—in which it sounds fairly well.” Christian ] The verses here, added to C in 1906, originally appeared in “The Passing Show” (E, 26 Nov. 1899: 14; J, 3 Dec. 1899: 27). Cf. “Prattle” (E, 25 Dec. 1898: 12; Am, 1 Jan. 1899: 43): “I made no such ‘statement’ as that ‘the Christian religion is a narrow religion’; so I am under no obligation to tell you ‘What is wider.’ Incidentally I may say that in the matter of width the gulf between Christianity and Christ is no floor-crack.”
Christmas ] See also the poems “An Unmerry Christmas” (1885; CW 4.155) and “The Yearly Lie” (1887; CW 4.317) and the essay “Christmas and the New Year” (CW 9.235) for AB’s feelings about Christmas.
Clarionet ] Now spelled clarinet.
Clergyman ] W adds the following verses:
The clergyman to Tom, one day,
Said: “Work is worthy of its pay;
You to your body did attend,
But I your soul did ever mend.”
Said Tom: “I recognize the debt,
And pay it thus.” A coin he set
Before the parson’s eyes awhile,
Then pocketed it with a smile,
Remarking: “Since the thing you mend
Is unsubstantial, pious friend,
It clearly seems the fitting way
In unsubstantial coin to pay.”
Clinic ] AB refers to the derivation of the word from the Greek kline, a bed.
Clio ] Xenophon (430?-355? BCE) was a Greek soldier and writer, author of the Anabasis, an account of the expedition of the Greek mercenaries under Cyrus (401-399 BCE). Herodotus (fifth century BCE) was a Greek historian, known as the “Father of History,” whose accounts of the Persian Wars are the earliest known examples of narrative history. Clio is also mentioned in the verses at “Prehistoric.” In W, the definition concludes:
… speakers, whose remarks elicited hearty and frequent applause, but with whom on all questions of fact we beg leave to differ.*
*The illustrious author of this Dictionary seems to have made a long leap from ancient Grecian mythology to modern American politics. He was apparently “set off” by using the word “preside,” with its associations of the “mass-meeting” and the “stump.” —Ed. Wasp.
Clock ] In W, the verses are attributed to AB’s friend, the poet Jo[aquin] Miller, for whom, see “Heigh-ho.”
Close-communion ] Communion in the Lord’s Supper restricted to the baptized members belonging to the same denomination or the same church, as opposed to open communion.
Close-corporation ] A corporation in which the shares of stock are held by few persons and are not traded publicly.
Close-fisted ] Samuel Johnson (1709-84) ridiculed the attempts of James Macpherson (1736-96) to pass off the poems of “Ossian” as the work of an ancient Gaelic bard.
Coenobite ] A cenobite (male or female) is a member of a convent or other religious community, as opposed to an anchorite, a religious person who lives in seclusion.
Clove ] Cloves often were used to mask the odor of alcohol on the breath.
Colonel ] AB continually vilified those who affected tides to which they had no right, “Colonel” being one such tide. See “Prattle” (E, 27 Nov. 1887: 4): “We are simple republicans in America—we are not fond of titles—O, no! And every third man a ‘General’ or a ‘Colonel,’ and one of each two others a ‘Judge.’ The coarse good-will that bestows these titles with so abominable indiscrimination and the coarser vanity that accepts them are, apparently, proof against ridicule and inaccessible to shame.”
Comet ] Two weeks prior to the appearance of this definition in W, AB had written about comets in “Prattle” (W, 2 July 1881: 5): “I am a little warm on the subject of the comet because it can hardly be unknown to the world that despite the malevolent and interested falsehoods of my wicked contemporaries, I was the first man in San Francisco to discover it, as I came from dinner at three o’clock on last Wednesday morning. I had afterward the mortification to learn from the dispatches that it had previously been sighted by the Astronomer Royal of the Observatory at Omaha. This disposed, I admit, of my proprietary rights; but at least I am the manager and agent for the Pacific Coast.”
Commit ] See WR 30: “Fully for Definitively, or Finally. ‘After many preliminary examinations he was fully committed for trial.’ The adverb is meaningless: a defendant is never part committed for trial. This is a solecism to which lawyers are addicted. And sometimes they have been heard to be ‘fullied.’”
Common-law ] Based on custom and usage rather than on written law.
Compunction ] AB alludes to the Greek proverbial expression “kick against the pricks” (sometimes “kick against the goad”), to feel or show pointless opposition to or resentment of an often necessary authority. See Acts 26:14: “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” The verses from W are omitted because AB used them at “Symbolic” in D.
Concatenate ] See “Abrupt.” The verses were reprinted, slightly revised, as “A Mine for Reformers” (1881; CW 5.207).
Confession ] Confession is not the place where the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as it is now known, occurs but the act by which penitents tell their sins to a confessor in order to receive absolution. The confessional was formerly a dark stall in the church in which penitent and confessor were separated by an opaque screen (as at “Jester”), but it is now commonly a less forbidding room where the penitent can face the confessor.
Congregation ] See “Censor Literarum” (1892; CW 5.235), addressed to Parson (Horatio) Stebbins:
What spreads
The fame of your existence, once a week,
From the Pacific Mail dock to the Heads,
Warning the people you’re about to wreak
Upon the human ear your Sunday freak?—
Whereat the most betake them to their beds,
Though some prefer to slumber in the pews
And not assent to your hypnotic views.
Conjugal ] Cf. “Marriage.”
Connoisseur ] In W, the definition reads: “One who knows what is what, and is commonly content with that degree of knowledge.”
Consolation ] Cf. “Comfort.”
Controversy ] Dramer Brune is a character in “The Story of a Conscience” (1890; CW 2.165).
Cookery ] Marion Harland was the pseudonym of Mary Virginia (Hawes) Terhune (18301922), author of many books on cookery, housekeeping, and similar subjects, as well as several novels.
Corned ] A parody of William Congreve (1670-1729), The Mourning Bride (1697): “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” (iii.8). For Stuart, see “Ambition.”
Coroner ] See “A Bottomless Grave” (1888; CW 8.II): “I must tell you, my children, that in a case of sudden and mysterious death the law requires the Coroner to come and cut the body into pieces and submit them to a number of men who, having inspected them, pronounce the person dead. For this the Coroner gets a large sum of money.’”
Corporal ] W adds the following: “[Latin, corpus, a body. A corporal is so called because he isn’t anybody.]”
Corporation ] Cf. “Administration.”
Corpse ] AB calls the tomb (q.v.) the “House of Indifference.” (He initially had defined it as “a habitation of the indifferent”; likewise, he initially defined “Impartial” as “Dead.”)
Corsair ] A pirate. W adds the following verses:
He was a cracking corsair
And a bouncing buccaneer
But he got a rope of horse-hair,
With the knot beneath his ear.
And when he felt that halter
He repented all his crime,
And his life he swore to alter,
But he didn’t have the time.
But let sorrow not usurp us;
Though he’s cut all earthly joys,
Yet he serves a noble purpose
In the story-books for boys.
Couple ] William C. Bartlett (1818-1907) was an editorial writer for the San Francisco Bulletin frequently attacked by AB.
Court Fool ] In Am, 22 Feb. 1906, AB defined “Plaintiff” as “n. See Court Fool.” See “Jester.”
Covet ] The first major revision of the King James Bible was published in 1881 (New Testament) and 1885 (Old Testament), based on ancient manuscripts that had come to light since the publication of the “Authorized Version” in 1611. See “For a Revised Version” (1879; CW 5.303), surely written with knowledge that the work was in progress. AB wrote a lengthy parody of public response to the Revised Version in “Prattle” (W, 3 June 1881: 357). Other distortions of the Ten Commandments appear at “Decalogue” and “Sabbath.”
Cow ] Apparently AB did not think the water from an artesian well was very good to drink. See “Prattle” (E, 26 June 1887: 4): “The long-disused artesian well at the New City Hall is to be cleaned out, and such of the statesmen thereabout as have the baneful habit of impairing the efficacy of their triple-distilled thunder-and-lightning with water will have to use the water of that well or go across the street—an unwonted exertion. This is a long step in the direction of reform, for the fluid will most consummately and irreparably efface them.”
Coyness ] “He who hesitates is lost” is a common misquotation of a line in Joseph Addison’s Cato (1713): “The woman that deliberates is lost.”
Crayfish ] Or crawfish; a small, edible, freshwater crustacean resembling the lobster. Merivale is fictitious.
Creditor ] See also B13 in the Appendix. Cremona ] The definition in W concludes:
A genuine Connecticut Cremona is supposed to be mentioned in the following lines of Omar Khayyam:
Hey, diddle, diddle!
The cat got the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon,
But the little dog stayed
To hear the thing played,
And died of the very first tune.
These verses parody a well-known Mother Goose rhyme. Cremona is a city in northern Italy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was reputed for its violin makers, including the Amati, Guernieri, and Stradivari families.
Crest ] AB mocked heraldry as yet another “survival” in “Prattle” (E, 17 Apr. 1892: 6; rpt. in part as “Symbols and Fetishes,” CW 9.185): “Heraldry dies hard. It is of purely savage origin, having its roots in the ancient necessity of tribal classification.…Among people where [heraldic devices] exist as ‘survivals’ their use is at least a tolerable stupidity; but in America, where they come by cold-blooded adoption essentially simian, they are offensive inexpressibly. Many of the devices upon the seals of our States are no less ridiculous than those used (and the use of any) by some of our ‘genteel’ families to hint at an illustrious descent.… [M]y notion of a suitable design for the national coatof-arms is this: An illiterate voter, rampant, on a field gules. Motto: ‘To Hell with Everything.’”
Critic ] The verses here first appeared in “Prattle” (E, 29 Jan. 1893: 6). Cf. Isaac Watts (1674-1748), “Hymn 66”:
There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
Cross ] The verses here first appeared in “Prattle” (E, 21 Oct. 1895: 6).
Cui Bono? ] A Latin phrase meaning “to whose advantage?” Thus, advantage or selfinterest is considered a determinant of motivation or value.
Cunning ] The definition in W concludes:
A different view of the matter, however, is taken in the following fable of the Rev. Father Gassalasca Jape, of the Mission San Diablo:
A Bear accosted once a Fox,
And the two stopped a Rabbit.
Said Bruin: “I have found a box
Of honey; let us grab it!”
The Fox said: “That is well enough
For you, but why should we fight?
I like full well the pleasant stuff,
But do not love the bee-fight.”
Thus he, dissembling all his glee.
“Nay,” said the Rabbit, feigning
Assent; “as strong a force are we
As ever went campaigning.
“All warlike virtues we unite,
Our character completing;
Fox to manoeuvre, Bear to fight,
And Rabbit for retreating.
“The prizes of the war we’ll share,
Like conquerors in story:
Sweets to the Fox, stings to the Bear,
And I content with glory!”
Cupid ] W adds the following verses:
They slander thee, Venus
As mother of Cupid.
Jove smite the vile genus
That slander thee, Venus!
For truly, between us,
The libel is stupid.
They slander thee, Venus,
As mother of Cupid.
If ever I catch him
About my heart prowling
I’ll bite him and scratch him,
If I can just catch him,
Bald-headed I’ll snatch him
And set him a-howling,
If ever I catch him
About my heart prowling.
Cynic ] Cf. “The Town Crier” (NL, 9 Mar. 1872: 9), where AB encapsulates his philosophy in his supposed parting column: “Be as decent as you can. Don’t believe without evidence. Treat things divine with marked respect—don’t have anything to do with them. Do not trust humanity without collateral security; it will play you some scurvy trick. Remember that it hurts no one to be treated as an enemy entitled to respect until he shall prove himself a friend worthy of affection. Cultivate a taste for distasteful truths. And, finally, most important of all, endeavor to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.”
Dado ] Actually the word has several specific meanings: (I) the section of a pedestal between the base and surbase; (2) the lower part of a wall of a room, decorated differently from the upper part; (3) a rectangular groove cut into a board into which a like piece may be fitted.
Damn ] Paphlagonia was an ancient province in the Graeco-Roman world, situated in Turkey between Bithynia and Pontus. “Dolabelly” is a play on the ancient Roman name Dolabella. “Professor Groke” is a parody of George Grote (1794-1871), an English historian whose History of Greece (1846-56) was a landmark. Cf. “The Passing Show” (E, 2 Dec. 1900; SS 65-66): “At a recent meeting of a Congregational Club … Dr. Hubbell said: I bear personal testimony that if ever a man prays in his life it is in the midst of battle.’ My personal testimony is the other way. I have been in a good many battles, and in my youth I used sometimes to pray—when in trouble. But I never prayed in battle. I was always too much preoccupied to think about it. Probably Dr. Hubbell was misled by hearing in battle the sacred Name spoken on all sides with great frequency and fervency. And probably he was too busy with his own devotions to observe, or, observing, did not understand the mystic word that commonly followed—which, as nearly as I can recollect, was ‘dammit.’”
Dance ] In the summer of 1877 a book entitled The Dance of Death, by “William Herman,” scandalized San Francisco. Under the guise of condemning the growing practice of ballroom dancing as lewd and immoral, it portrayed the overheated emotions of the men and women who engaged in it in such frank terms as itself to be considered obscene. Only years later did AB admit that he had written it in conjunction with Thomas A. Harcourt (the book was financed by William Herman Rulofson). Although the work supposedly was a joke, it is likely AB did regard dancing as immoral.
Danger ] Delaso is also the poet to whom the lines under “Tortoise” are attributed.
Datary ] Datum Rome means “dated at Rome.”
Dead ] W adds the following verses:
Ignoble end to all the strife!
To lie as ne’er we lay in life,
With legs uncomfortably straight
And rigid fixity of pate,
Pierced through and through by worms that live
To make, with needless skill, a sieve
Out of our skin, to sift our dust.
Vain labor! at the last they just
Bolt us unbolted till they bu’st!
Debt ] See also B13 (Debtor) in the Appendix.
Decalogue ] W for 9 Dec. 1881 contained the following comment (but note that the lines quoted correspond to the appearance in W): “In our Devil’s Dictionary last week was given a metrical revised edition of the Ten Commandments, the fourth being as follows: ‘Work not on Sabbath days at all, / Nor dare to read the Sunday Call.’ True genius is always prophetic; while the writer was working at his idea a justice of the peace at Watsonville was convicting a local newsdealer of an infraction of the Sunday law in selling the Sunday Call on the day of publication. We could hardly have hoped that our revised Decalogue would so soon be adopted as the law of the land” (p. 370). See also “The New Decalogue” (1887; CW 5.233):
Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.
Adore no images save those
The coinage of thy country shows.
Take not the Name in vain. Direct
Thy swearing unto some effect.
Thy hand from Sunday work be held—
Work not at all unless compelled.
Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.
Kill not—death liberates thy foe
From persecution’s constant woe.
Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife. Of course
There’s no objection to divorce.
To steal were folly, for ’Tis plain
In cheating there is greater gain.
Bear not false witness. Shake your head
And say that you have “heard it said.”
Who stays to covet ne’er will catch
An opportunity to snatch.
AB’s poem is itself suggested by “The Latest Decalogue” by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-61):
Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.
The sum of all is, thou shalt love,
If anybody, God above:
At any rate shall never labor
More than thyself to love thy neighbour.
In The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough, ed. H. F. Lowry, A. L. P. Norrington, and F. L. Mulhauser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 60-61. Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-99) was a renowned agnostic lecturer and writer whom AB defended in his columns.
Decide ] See also the verses at “Free-will.”
Deer ] Cf. “Hare.”
Degenerate ] In the Iliad, Homer never says that the heroes could lift a stone that ten men could not lift; rather, he frequently asserts that the heroes lifted stones that would require two men of his day (see, e.g., Iliad 5.302-04). The line that AB quotes is from Pope’s Iliad: “Such men as live in these degen’rate days” (5.372 = 12.540). The phrase in Homer (Iliad 5.304 = 12.449) is hoioi nun brotoi eis. AB alludes to this passage in “Is the Human Race Decreasing in Stature?” (Am, 4 Oct. 1903: 24; E, 25 Oct.1903:52 [as “The Long and Short of It”]).
Deinotherium ] The word (sometimes spelled dinotherium) was a variant term for “deinosaur” or “dinosaur,” derived from the Greek deinos and therium, or “terrifying wild beast.”
Deiparous ] Just as viviparous means to bring forth living young and oviparous means to produce eggs that hatch outside the body, deiparous means to give birth to gods and stultiparous means to give birth to fools. Nob Hill is an upper-class area of San Francisco.
Deist ] A deist is one who believes, based solely on reason, that God created the universe and then abandoned it, exerting no influence or control over it.
Dejeuner ] Actually, déjeuner means “lunch”;petit déjeuner is “breakfast.”
Deluge ] The story of the Deluge is told in Ezekiel 13 :11-13. See also “Baal,” “Flood,” and “Inundation.” In W, the definition concludes: “Since then it has been deemed advisable to let the sinners remain on their good behavior.”
Demi-john ] A large, narrow-necked bottle made of glass or earthenware, usually encased in wickerwork; in AB’s sense, a wine bottle.
Demon ] AB mocks the journalistic excesses of his time, as under “Deny,” “Lacteal Fluid,” and others.
Demonomania ] AB’s coined word is similar to monomania, a pathological obsession with one subject or idea.
Deny ] The definition refers to the orotund speech of the politicians of AB’s day.
Deputy ] W adds the following lines between lines 10 and 11:
No time to lose—work with a will,
Nor further seek to prove your skill
In spitting at a mark; renounce
The joy of giving the grand bounce
To flies that settle on your crown
Or trace their courses up and down
The nose official. Spring to work!
No pains neglect, no labor shirk.
Deranged ] The insanity defense is a frequent topic in AB’s newspaper columns. In “An Execution in Batrugia” (1907), later incorporated into “The Land Beyond the Blow,” AB addresses the insanity defense in the case of murder: “‘Law … is for the good of the greatest number. Execution of an actual lunatic now and then is not an evil to the community, nor, when rightly considered, to the lunatic himself. He is better off when dead, and society is profited by his removal. We are spared the cost of exposing imposture, the humiliation of acquitting the guilty, the peril of their freedom, the contagion of their evil example’” (CW 1.166).
Descendant ] AB loathed Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). This definition appeared in W just before Wilde’s American tour of 1882 made its way to San Francisco (he arrived on 26 Mar. and remained in the area until 8 Apr.). In a “Prattle” written during Wilde’s stay, AB excoriated Wilde at length (W, 31 Mar. 1882; SS 192). See also the note to “Eccentricity.”
Descent ] Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82), English naturalist, conceived the theory of evolution by natural selection. The Descent of Man (1871) is a supplement to his Origin of Species (1859).
Deshabille ] Cf. “Presentable.”
Desiccate ] This is one of three verbs (the others are “Hug” and “Hunt”) that AB designates as “v.a..,” meaning “verb, active.” It is erroneous to refer to verbs in English as such (they are typically designated either v.i. or v.t.), but AB jokingly alludes to the actions implied in the verbs.
Detective ] See “The Circular Clew” (1893; CW 6.224):
A Detective searching for the murderer of a dead man was accosted by a Clew.
“Follow me,” said the Clew, “and there’s no knowing what you may discover.”
So the Detective followed the Clew a whole year through a thousand sinuosities and at last found himself in the office of the Morgue.
“There!” said the Clew, pointing to the open register.
The Detective eagerly scanned the page, and found an official statement that the deceased was dead. Thereupon he hastened to Police Headquarters to report progress. The Clew, meanwhile, sauntered among the busy haunts of men, arm in arm with an Ingenious Theory.
Devil ] “Ella Wheeler” refers to Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919), a popular writer and poet whose later work often appeared adjacent to AB’s in the Hearst papers. AB also twits Wilcox under the definitions “Leonine” (as “Bella Peeler Silcox”) and “Lyre.”
Dextrality ] Brig. Gen. John McComb, later warden of the state penitentiary at San Quentin, was one of AB’s favorite whipping boys.
Diary ] When this definition appeared in W and C, AB’s diarist was merely “Sam.” AB changed the name to “Hearst” for D. William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) was AB’s employer from 1887 to 1909. Their relationship was amicable at first, but AB resigned from Hearst’s employ following his growing displeasure with the way Hearst’s editors handled his work.
Dictionary ] In W, for “a most useful work” read “one of the most useful works that its author, Dr. John Satan, has ever produced. It is designed to be a compendium of everything that is known up to date of its completion, and will drive a screw, repair a red wagon or apply for a divorce. It is a good substitute for measeis [sic], and will make rats come out of their holes to die. It is a dead shot for worms, and children cry for it.” See also “Lexicographer.”
Die ] “The die is cast” (iacta alea est) was attributed to Julius Caesar by Suetonius (Dims Julius 32.3). AB plays upon the two meanings of “die” (game piece and a device for forming) and “cast” (tossed and molded). For Senator Depew, see “Abandon.” In W, attribution to Senator Depew is instead to “Mr. Charles Shinn, of the Bulletin”
Digestion ] In W, the definition ends as follows:
This brutal judgment is found in his pamphlet entitled Why are Women Sickly (John Camden Hotten: London, 1870), a work that has elicited well-merited execration in seventy languages.
“Why are all our women sickly?”
Asks the famous Dr. Blenn.
That is answered very quickly,—
“Our physicians are all men.”
There is not in this wide world a pleasure so sweet as the vindication of lovely woman against unjust aspersion.
John Camden Hotten (1832-73) published AB’s first book, The Fiend’s Delight (1873), “against [AB’s] protest” (letter to James D. Blake, 22 Oct. 1907; ALS, San Francisco Public Library). AB characterized him as “not a nice publisher to deal with” (letter to C. W. Stoddard, 29 Dec. 1872; ALS, Huntington Library and Art Gallery).
Disenchant ] Apparently AB objected to the wearing of pantaloons by women because they were a bit too clingy, as noted in his observation on summer fashions: “Pantaloons will probably hold their own” (“The Town Crier,” NL, 8 May 1869: 9). For Mary Walker, see note on “Handkerchief.” Mrs. Stow is probably the wife of William W. Stow (see note to “Epitaph”). See the poetic drama “Mrs. Stow’s Pants” (W, 10 Feb. 1882: 83) and also “Prattle” (W, 9 June 1882: 357):
Says Mrs. Stow: “I’d have you know
I heed not witless speeches,
And I’ll be dressed as suits me best,
And just as Nature teaches.”
So Mrs. Stow from top to toe
Will practice what she preaches—
Divided shirt, divided skirt,
And corresponding breeches.
Dishonesty ] The maxim “Honesty is the best policy” derives from Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Book III, chap. 33). AB mentions the writings of ludas Iscariot in “The Town Crier” (NL, 18 Sept. 1869: 9) and a Church of St. Judas Iscariot in “The Town Crier” (NL, 21 Aug. 1869:11) and “Prattle” (E, 22 Apr. 1888: 4), placing it in London in the earlier appearance.
Disobey ] Israfel Brown is also the author of some short verses in “On with the Dance!” (1880; CW 8.332).
Dissyllable ] See “Prattle” (E, 12 June 1887: 4): “I love a San Francisco poet—a good, downright, sentimental local songsmith. … This talented lyrist contributes to a presumably grateful contemporary a ‘poem’ on ‘Enthusiasm,’ and pronounces it in five syllables—enthusiazzum. I trust he will not think it sarcazzum if I urge him to favor us with an ode to Slippery Ellum.”
Divination ] W adds the following verses:
There’s a popular kind of divining
That prospectors use in their mining.
’Tis done with a rod,
One end to the ore vein inclining.
The mine thus discovered they docket,
And list it as soon as they stock it.
A miner then delves,
While they all help themselves
To the metal in stockholder’s [sic] pockets.
I have never heard that the miner
Made business for any refiner,
But the prospectors wink
And (magnanimous) drink
The health of that blund’ring diviner.
Divine ] As a noun, divine refers to a cleric. AB uses the phrase “bird of pray” in “Silhouettes of Orientals” (CW 4.76). Divorce ] See also B14 in the Appendix.
Doctor ] Note that AB revised references to “doctor” in the appearances of “The Devil’s Dictionary” to “physician” (q.v.) for inclusion in D. See “Prattle” (E, 15 Sept. 1889: 4): “‘Doctor’ means teacher, and most physicians not only do not teach but do all they can to keep the world in ignorance of their art.”
Dog ] Cf. Luke 12:27: “Consider the lilies how they grow; they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” AB often described the dog as “an anachronism,” as in this representative selection (“Prattle,” W, 14 Apr. 1882; SS 195): “It must seem to the Dog that the substances, methods and functions of nature are arranged with special reference to his needs, his capacities, his future. He can hardly help thinking himself gifted with peculiar advantages and inheriting the earth. Yet the rascal is an anachronism who exhausted his mandate ages and ages ago, and now lags superfluous on the stage. He is a ‘survival’ who since the dawn of civilization has had no function and no meaning. Our love for him we have inherited along with many other instincts transmitted from our savage past. If there had never been a dog and one were created, we should fall foul of him with hard substances and a clamor of tongues. He would seem uglier than a reporter, and more hateful than a poet.”
Domestic ] Artemus Ward (pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne [1834-67]) was an American humorist.
Dotage ] Cf. “A Sole Survivor” (1890; CW 1.388): “Of reminiscences there is no end. I have a vast store of them laid up, wherewith to wile away the tedious years of my anecdotage—whenever it shall please Heaven to make me old.” This pun is borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Lothair (1870): “When a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire” (chap. 28).
Dragon ] See also “Cockatrice.”
Dragoon ] A heavily armed trooper in European armies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Drowsy ] In W, this definition immediately followed “Dramatist.”
Druids ] The definition in D is fused together from two separate definitions from W from 12 Aug. and 23 Dec. 1882. The definition from 23 Dec. reads as follows:
DRUIDS, n.pl. The priests of an ancient Celtic religion which, originating in Britain, spread over Gaul, Germany and, according to Pliny, as far as Persia. The Druids performed their religious rights in groves, and knew nothing of church mortgages and the season-ticket system of pew-rents. They were, in short, heathens and—as they were once complacently catalogued by a distinguished prelate of the Church of England— “Dissenters.” The United Ancient Order of Druids, which has several “Groves” in San Francisco and one—Grove Johnson— in Sacramento, and whose mystic rites consist in tossing the startled initiate in a blanket, claim a legitimate and unbroken succession from the ancient Celtic priesthood, but their pretensions are disposed of by the simple circumstance that the latter had no blankets. They tossed their initiates in a well.
Druids are mentioned sporadically throughout Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. For Caesar on Druids, see Gallic War 6.13-16.
Drunk ] See also “Corned,” “Potable,” and “Tope.”
Duel ] AB’s sixteen-year-old son Day was killed in 1889 in a duel over a girl. See also A8 in the Appendix.
Dullard ] Boeotia, a province in ancient Greece, became widely known for the stupidity of its inhabitants. The definition in W ends with the sentence: “And of the Californian Dullards we prefer Dr. Platt and Captain W. L. Merry.”
Eat ] The three functions are chewing, moistening, and swallowing. Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) was a French jurist and author of Physiologie du gout (1825), a classic work on gastronomy. Cf. “Prattle” (E, 29 June 1890: 6): “Brillat-Savarin protested against being disturbed ‘while enjoying his dinner.’ He had dined two hours before. This is accounted an instance of perfect digestion.”
Eccentricity ] See “Prattle” (W, 7 Apr. 1882; SS 194): “Let us admit that Mr. Wilde’s eccentricities in hair and innovations in attire are not in themselves displeasing. It remains true and cogent against him that men of brains do not deem it worth while to differ from their fellow men in these particulars, but only in point of superior mental or moral excellence. They do not compete for honors easily won by clowns and cranks. It follows that Mr. Wilde is not a man of brains; why should I concern myself with his work? I have read it and been unpleasantly affected by it. That is enough.”
Editor ] The three judges of the underworld in Greek mythology. Minos, king of Crete, and Rhadamanthus were sons of Zeus and Europa; Aeacus was the son of Zeus and Aegina. An obolus was a silver coin used in ancient Greece, equivalent to one sixth of a drachma.
Effect ] Cf. “Moxon’s Master” (1899; CW 3.94-95): “‘As Mill points out, we know nothing of cause except as an antecedent—nothing of effect except as a consequent. Of certain phenomena, one never occurs without another, which is dissimilar: the first in point of time we call cause, the second, effect. One who had many times seen a rabbit pursued by a dog, and had never seen rabbits and dogs otherwise, would think the rabbit the cause of the dog.’” AB repeats the illustration in “Concerning Terrestrial Lunarians” (Am, 15 May 1903:14; E, 30 May 1903:14).
Efferous … ] Efferous means fierce or violent; effigate, to portray by painting or sculpture; efflagitate, to demand eagerly; effodient, accustomed to digging; and effossion, the act of digging out of the ground. All are rare or obsolete words.
Egotist ] Megaceph means “large head.”
Elector ] AB directed much of his satire toward the folly of the electoral process. See, for example, “The Kingdom of Tortirra” (1888; later incorporated into “The Land Beyond the Blow,” CW 1.180-81): “In Tortirran politics, as in Tamtonian, the population is always divided into two, and sometimes three or four ‘parties,’ each having a ‘policy’ and each conscientiously believing the policy of the other, or others, erroneous and destructive. In so far as these various and varying policies can be seen to have any relation whatever to practical affairs they can be seen also to be the result of purely selfish considerations. The self-deluded people flatter themselves that their elections are contests of principles, whereas they are only struggles of interests. They are very fond of the word slagthrit, ‘principle’; and when they believe themselves acting from some high moral motive they are capable of almost any monstrous injustice or stupid folly. This insane devotion to principle is craftily fostered by their political leaders who invent captivating phrases intended to confirm them in it; and these deluding aphorisms are diligently repeated until all the people have them in memory, with no knowledge of the fallacies which they conceal. One of these phrases is ‘Principles, not men.’ In the last analysis this is seen to mean that it is better to be governed by scoundrels professing one set of principles than by good men holding another. That a scoundrel will govern badly, regardless of the principles which he is supposed somehow to ‘represent,’ is a truth which, however obvious to our own enlightened intelligence, has never penetrated the dark understandings of the Tortirrans. It is chiefly through the dominance of the heresy fostered by this popular phrase that the political leaders are able to put base men into office to serve their own nefarious ends.” See also “Suffrage.”
Electricity ] The quotation about “Monsieur Franqulin” deliberately confuses Franklin’s life with that of Capt. James Cook.
Elegy ] The verses are a parody of the opening stanza of Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly e’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
See “Apron” for another parody of the poem.
Elephant ] The elephant, along with the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, are frequently mentioned in AB’s humorous sketches, particularly the Little Johnny tales. See also “Proboscis.”
Eleusinian ] The Eleusinian Mysteries, founded by Eumolpus, were the most famous religious mysteries of the ancient world, consisting of purification, fasts, rites, and dramas portraying the legend of Demeter (Ceres) and Persephone. They were believed to insure happiness in the future world and to forecast resurrection and immortality. The site of the Eleusinian Mysteries was Eleusis, a town fourteen miles west of Athens.
Eloquence ] See also “White” and A9 and A17 in the Appendix.
Elysium ] Also the Elysian Fields, Isles of the Blest, Heaven, Paradise. The home of the blessed in the afterlife, according to Greek mythology.
Embalm ] See also “The Views of One” (Am, 20 Apr. 1905:16; E, 28 Apr. 1905: 20): “The ancient custom of embalming the dead is what makes modern Egypt treeless: it locked up the gases needed by vegetation. There is an exact balance between the animal and the vegetable kingdoms; they feed on each other’s decay, and neither can prosper if the other’s dead is denied it. Embalm yourselves and make a desert—make a desert and your posterity will be sparse.”
Ember Days ] Days reserved for prayer and fasting by some Christian churches in the four seasons of the year. Observed on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following the first Sunday of Lent, Whitsunday, 14 Sept. (Holy Cross Day), and 13 Dec. (St. Lucia’s Day).
Emotion ] W adds the following verses:
She showed such strong emotion,
Leaning o’er the vessel’s planks,
That the man who owned the ocean
Said he’d have to raise its banks.
Loring Pickering.
Loring Pickering (1812-?), another of AB’s favorite whipping boys, was co-owner of the San Francisco Morning Call and frequently wrote poetic obituaries for a fee; see AB’s poem about him, “An Obituarian” (CW 5.23).
Encomiast ] A eulogist; but also anyone who delivers warm, glowing praise.
Encumbrance ] A legal usage. OED quotes the American lawyer Francis Wharton: “A claim, lien, liability attached to property, as a mortgage, a registered judgment, etc.”
End ] An interlocutor (q.v.) is a performer in whiteface in a minstrel show placed midway between the end men in blackface (Mr. Tambo, who played tambourine, and Mr. Bones) and who engages in banter with them. The attribution of the poem in W is to “Sir William Emerson.” See “Prattle” (W, 12 Mar. 1881: 164): “a Washington journal affronts decency and outrages heaven by an ‘interview’ with Billy Emerson, the end-man of a nigger minstrel troupe. William split his face and agitated his tongue like the tail of a spring lamb, but to what purport and purpose I am unable to say; life, thank the good Lord, is too short to peruse the record of a nigger minstrel’s mind.”
Endear ] Charles Crocker (1822-88) was one of the “Big Four” railroad tycoons of the later nineteenth century, acting as vice president of the Central Pacific Railroad. Maj. Benjamin Cummins Truman (1835-1916) was a widely published California journalist and historian. AB’s references to him in print were not flattering. See “A Railroad Lackey” (1888; CW 5.100). AB applied the epithet “Rare” to Truman in “Prattle” (W, 15 May 1886:5).
Enigma ] AB refers to Loring Pickering (see note on “Emotion”).
Enough ] The attribution in W is to Leland Stanford (1824-93), governor of California (1861-63), U.S. senator from California (1885-93), president of the Central Pacific Railroad (1861-93), founder of Stanford University, and one of the builders of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad.
Entertainment ] AB ironically applies the word “dejection” to various kinds of entertainment; see “Farce,” “Gloom,” “Jester,” “Pastime,” “Piano,” “Pleasure,” and “Recreation.”
Enthusiasm ] George Gordon, Lord Byron (b. 1788), the English poet, spent his last days in Missolonghi in Greece, where he had gone to assist in the Greek War of Independence, and died in 1824, not in battle but of a fever. In a letter dated 26 Apr. 1817, Byron wrote: “The Venus [de’ Medici] is more for admiration than love; but there are sculpture and painting, which for the first time all gave me an idea of what people meant by their cant, and what Mr. [John] Braham calls ‘entusimusy’ (i.e., enthusiasm) about those two most artificial of the arts” (quoted in Leslie A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography, 3 vols. [New York: Knopf, 1957], 2.690).
Eocene ] The Eocene epoch (54 to 38 million years ago) was the second oldest epoch of the Tertiary period, which is part of the most recent era, the Cenozoic.
Epicure ] Epicurus (341?-270 BCE) was the founder of the school of Epicureanism, a philosophy that considered pleasure (i.e., the avoidance of pain) to be the highest good. The pejorative use of the term “epicurean” was fostered by Epicurus’ opponents, who claimed that he was advocating sensual pleasure. “Epicure” has a variety of meanings, for example, “one who gives himself up to sensual pleasure, esp. to eating” or “one who cultivates a refined taste for the pleasures of the table” (OED).
Epigram ] The third epigram appeared in “Aphorisms of a Late Spring” (Am, 24 Apr. 1904: 25; E, 8 May 1904: 44). Most are collected in CW 8, slightly revised. Cf. the epigram at 2. to the following in “Epigrams” (CW 8.379):
When God had finished this terrestrial frame
And all things else, with or without a name,
The Nothing that remained within His hand
Said: “Make me into something fine and grand,
Thine angels to amuse and entertain.”
God heard and made it into human brain.
The epigram at 3. appears in CW 5.203 as “An Epigrammatist.” The following epigrams appeared in C:
Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.
Think not to atone for wealth by apology: you must make restitution by a loan to the accuser.
Study good women and ignore the rest,
For he best knows the sex who knows the best.
Before undergoing a surgical operation arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.
“Who art thou?” said Saint Peter at the Gate.
“I am known as Memory.”
“What presumption! —go back to Hell. And who, perspiring friend, art thou?”
“My name is Satan. I am looking for—”
“Take your penal apparatus and be off.”
And Satan, laying hold of Memory, said: “Come along, you scoundrel; you make happiness wherever you are not.”
Self-denial is the weak indulgence of a propensity to forego.
Men talk of selecting a wife; horses of selecting an owner.
You are not permitted to kill a woman that has injured you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are avenged 1440 times a day.
A sweetheart is a bottle of wine. A wife is a wine bottle.
He gets on best with women who best knows how to get on without them.
“Who am I?” asked an awakened soul.
“That is the only knowledge that is denied to you here,” answered a smiling angel. “This is Heaven.”
Woman’s courage is ignorance of danger; man’s is hope of escape.
Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
The heels of Detection are sore from the toes of Remorse.
Twice we see Paradise. In youth we name it Life; in age, Youth.
There are but ten Commandments, true,
But that’s no hardship, friend, to you;
The unmentioned sins that tax your wit
You’re not commanded to commit.
Fear of the darkness is more than an inherited superstition—it is at night, mostly, that the king thinks.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but a multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obeys him.
“Who art thou?” said Mercy.
“Revenge, the father of Justice.”
“Thou wearest thy son’s clothing.”
“One must be clad.”
“Farewell—I go to attend thy son.”
“Thou wilt find him hiding in yonder jungle.”
When God had finished this terrestrial frame
And all things else, with or without a name,
The Nothing that remained within His hand
Said: “Make me into something fine and grand,
Thine angels to amuse and entertain.”
God heard and made it into human brain.
If you wish to slay your enemy make haste, O make haste, for already Nature’s knife is at his throat and yours.
To most persons a sense of obligation is insupportable; beware upon whom you inflict it.
Bear me, good oceans, to some isle
Where I may never fear
The snake alurk in woman’s smile,
The tiger in her tear.
Yet bear not with me her, O deeps,
Who never smiles and never weeps.
The ninety-and-nine who most loudly demand opportunity most bitterly revile the one who has made good use of it.
Life and Death threw dice for a child.
“I win!” cried Life.
“True,” said Death, “but you need a nimbler tongue to proclaim your luck. The child is already dead of age.”
How blind is he who, powerless to discern
The glories that about his pathway burn,
Walks unaware the avenues of Dream,
Nor sees the domes of Paradise agleam!
O Golden Age, to him more nobly planned
Thy light lies ever upon sea and land.
From sordid scenes he lifts his soul at will,
And sees a Grecian god on every hill!
In childhood we expect, in youth demand, in manhood hope and in age beseech.
Epitaph ] AB wrote dozens of satirical epitaphs, many of which are collected in “On Stone” (CW 5.[371]) and “Some Ante-Mortem Epitaphs” (CW 4.[345]). AB incessantly poked fun at Loring Pickering, “the famous tomb-stone poet” of San Francisco. The four men mentioned here were all regular victims of AB’s satire. Henry Vrooman (1844-89) was a state senator whom Bierce attacked in “Prattle” (E, 2 Sept. 1888: 4; rpt. as “A Californian Statesman,” CW 12.407). William W. Stow (1824-95) was an official of the Central Pacific Railroad and later park commissioner of San Francisco who was accused of raiding public funds; see “Prattle” (E, 6 Oct. 1889: 4). For Crocker, see “Endear.” Senator Cross is unidentified.
Equality ] The following mot from “Prattle” (W, 16 Sept. 1882: 581) anticipates George Orwell’s Animal Farm by sixty-three years: “All men are created equal. Some, it appears, are created a little more equal than others.”
Erudition ] AB’s third book, published as by “Dod Grile,” was entitled Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874).
Esoteric ] Information that is esoteric is comprehensible to a small group, whereas that which is exoteric is popular, or comprehensible to the public.
Esquire ] Frank M. Pixley became the object of AB’s undying wrath when he failed to rehire AB to work at Ar upon AB’s return from his Black Hills expedition of 1880-81.
Essential ] WR contains another harangue about the misuse of essential. For Bartlett, see “Couple.”
Estoppel ] “A bar preventing one from making an allegation or a denial that contradicts what one has previously stated as the truth” (AHD). See use of the verb estop at “Righteousness.”
Etiquette ] Cf. “Abdication” (def. 1), line 4 of verse.
Eucalyptus ] In AB’s mock Latin, nasocompressus means “nose-squeezing”; skunkatus is a parodic past participle (“skunked”); disgustifolium means “foul-leaf.” See “Prattle” (E, 18 Mar. 1888: 4): “I note with sunny satisfaction the decline and fall of the Eucalyptus disgustus: Alameda is cutting down hers and Oakland begins to think of taking action to procure an oak. A more abominable tree than the blue eucalyptus is, as an abstract idea, conceivable, but in the scheme of evolution the conception has never been practically realized. The best attempts at materializing it resulted in the poison-oak, the upas and the ‘sticktight,’ a Brazilian tree, covered all over with a transparent gum which captures and holds in decay everything that touches it, from the scratching hog to the drifted butterfly. The blue eucalyptus insults alike the eye and the nose—its odor is unhandsome and its color rank. In point of sanitary value—whereof Heaven has put it into the hearts of idiots to prate—it is a little more healing than smallpox and a little less than the sword.” In the late nineteenth century eucalyptus trees from Australia were planted throughout California to exploit their oil and hardwood, but the plan failed.
Eucharist ] The Theophagi are the “god-eaters.” Christian sects disagree as to what the Eu charist is. Catholics maintain that Christ is physically present in the Eucharist, but other denominations maintain that he is present only symbolically. See “Close-communion.” In W, the definition concludes: “Yet the viands are neither sausage or hash.”
Euchre ] Cf. “Cribbage.”
Eulogy ] See “Encomium.”
Evanescence ] To evanesce is to dissipate like a vapor.
Evangelist ] The definition in W concludes: “The evangelists proper are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; the evangelists improper are the parsons.” Evangelist comes from a Greek word meaning “bringing good news.”
Everlasting ] The definition in W concludes: “If the illustrious author had not been an ingenious theologian he would doubtless have been an accomplished lawyer.”
Exception ] In W, instead of the last two sentences, the definition reads: