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Ambrose Bierce was one of nineteenth-century America's most renowned satirists. The author of short stories, essays, fables, poems, and sketches, he was a popular columnist and wrote for several San Francisco and London newspapers during his forty-year journalism career.
Bierce's witty, sardonic definitions in The Devil's Dictionary were originally published in The Wasp, a weekly journal he edited in San Francisco from 1881 to 1886. As a compiled collection, these caustic aphorisms first appeared as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906, and was reissued in 1911 under the author's preferred title of The Devil's Dictionary.
Bierce's notorious collection of barbed definitions forcibly contradicts Samuel Johnson's earlier definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge. There was nothing harmless about Ambrose Bierce, and the words he shaped into verbal pitchforks a century ago are as sharp, amusing, and relevant today.
We have the entire work available for you to browse online (see page index below). If you want to buy a copy of the book, click here. There is an unabridged version available with approximately 600 extra definitions.
Index of Pages Online (Alphabetical)
We have the whole of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary online. The entries are arranged alphabetically on the pages listed below. If you want to buy this book details are at the bottom of the page.
How to Order a Copy of this Book
There are two versions of this book available. First, there is The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, as originally published in 1911. This is identical to the online version on the Fun-With-Words.com website, with almost 1,000 entries.
The second, which we recommend highly, is The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, which has about 1,600 citations.
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