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- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
User:BD2412/Ambrose Bierce, G-L User:BD2412/Ambrose Bierce, M-Qf User:BD2412/Ambrose Bierce, R-Z
A[edit]
- ABACTOR, n. One who steals a whole herd of cattle, as distinguished from the inferior actor who steals one animal at a time—a superior stock actor, as it were.
- ABACUS, n. In architecture, the upper part of a column, upon which, in all good architecture, sits the thoughtful stork pondering unutterable things.
- ABADDON, n. [1.] A certain person who is much in society, but whom one does not meet. A bad one. [2.] The Adversary of Souls, considered under one of his many charming aspects.
- ABASEMENT, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth of power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.
- ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.
- ABDOMEN, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race would become graminivorous.
- ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.
- ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
- ABRUPT, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon- shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author's ideas that they were "concatenated without abruption."
- ABSCOND, v.i. To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the property of another.
- ABSENTEE, n. A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.
- ABSTAINER, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
- ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.
- ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
- ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
- ACTUALLY, adv. Perhaps; possibly.
- ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.
- ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
- ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.
- ADHERENT, n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.
- ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.
- ADMIRAL, n. That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the figure-head does the thinking.
- ADMONITION, n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning.
- AFFIANCED, pp. Fitted with an ankle-ring for the ball-and-chain.
- AGITATOR, n. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors -- to dislodge the worms.
- ALDERMAN, n. An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretence of open marauding.
- ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
- ALTAR, n. The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female [SIC|tool|fool].
- AMBIDEXTROUS, adj. Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
- AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
- ANOINT, v.t. To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
- ANTIPATHY, n. The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.
- APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider.
- APRIL FOOL, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.
- ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
- ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.
- ARRAYED, pp. Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged to a lamppost.
- ARREST, v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.
- God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
- The Unauthorized Version
- ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.
- ARTLESSNESS, n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.
- ASPERSE, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.
- AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
B[edit]
- BAAL, n. An old deity formerly much worshiped under various names. As Baal he was popular with the Phoenicians; as Belus or Bel he had the honor to be served by the priest Berosus, who wrote the famous account of the Deluge; as Babel he had a tower partly erected to his glory on the Plain of Shinar. From Babel comes our English word "babble." Under whatever name worshiped, Baal is the Sun-god. As Beelzebub he is the god of flies, which are begotten of the sun's rays on the stagnant water. In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus, and as Belly he is adored and served with abundant sacrifice by the priests of Guttledom.
- BACCHUS, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
- Is public worship, then, a sin,
- That for devotions paid to Bacchus
- The lictors dare to run us in,
- And resolutely thump and whack us?
- Jorace
- BACK, n. That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.
- BACKBITE, v.t. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
- BAIT, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty.
- BAROMETER, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
- BARRACK, n. A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.
- BASILISK, n. The cockatrice. A sort of serpent hatched form the egg of a cock. The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal. Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved. Juno afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave. Nothing is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk, but the cocks have stopped laying.
- BASTINADO, n. The act of walking on wood without exertion.
- BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
- BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
- BIGAMY, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
- BLACKGUARD, n. A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box of berries in a market -- the fine ones on top -- have been opened on the wrong side. An inverted gentleman.
- BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker. The hyena.
- BONDSMAN, n. A fool who, having property of his own, undertakes to become responsible for that entrusted to another to a third. Philippe of Orleans wishing to appoint one of his favorites, a dissolute nobleman, to a high office, asked him what security he would be able to give. "I need no bondsmen," he replied, "for I can give you my word of honor." "And pray what may be the value of that?" inquired the amused Regent. "Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold."
- BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.
- BOUNTY, n. The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can.
- BRIDE, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
C[edit]
- CABBAGE, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
- CALLOUS, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.
- CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.
- CANNIBAL, n. A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.
- CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
- CANONICALS, n. The motley worm by Jesters of the Court of Heaven.
- CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat. Capital Punishment, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons -- including all the assassins -- entertain grave misgivings.
- CARNIVOROUS, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.
- CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work.
- CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse." The best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse added the fleetness of man. The scripture story of the head of John the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat sophisticated sacred history.
- CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance -- against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance. Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited him with as many as a hundred. Professor Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes the number twenty-seven -- a judgment that would be entirely conclusive is Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.
- CLARIONET, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet -- two clarionets.
- CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.
- CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious persons wish to obtain.
- COENOBITE, n. A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.
- O Coenobite, O coenobite,
- Monastical gregarian,
- You differ from the anchorite,
- That solitudinarian:
- With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
- With dropping shots he makes him sick.
- Quincy Giles
- COMMENDATION, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resemble, but do not equal, our own.
- COMMONWEALTH, n. An administrative entity operated by an incalculable multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously efficient.
- COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.
- CONDOLE, v.i. To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.
- CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.
- CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.
- An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision,
- some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him. "Pauillac, 1873," he
- murmured and died.
- CONSUL, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure and office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.
- CONSULT, v.i. To seek another's disapproval of a course already decided on.
- CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness.
- CORONATION, n. The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
- CORPORAL, n. A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military ladder.
- Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
- Our corporal heroically fell!
- Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
- And said: "He hadn't very far to fall."
- Giacomo Smith
- CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.
- COURT FOOL, n. The plaintiff.
- CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but less indigestible.
- In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably
- figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only
- backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the
- perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to
- avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend
- their nature afterward.
- Sir James Merivale
- CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.
- CUI BONO? [Latin] What good would that do me?
D[edit]
- DATARY, n. A high ecclesiastic official of the Roman Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the Pope's bulls with the words Datum Romae. He enjoys a princely revenue and the friendship of God.
- DEBAUCHEE, n. One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had the misfortune to overtake it.
- DEFENCELESS, adj. Unable to attack.
- DEGENERATE, adj. Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors. The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy; it required ten of them to raise a rock or a riot that one of the heroes of the Trojan war could have raised with ease. Homer never tires of sneering at "men who live in these degenerate days," which is perhaps why they suffered him to beg his bread -- a marked instance of returning good for evil, by the way, for if they had forbidden him he would certainly have starved.
- DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.
- DELUGE, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world.
- DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
- DEPUTY, n. A male relative of an office-holder, or of his bondsman. The deputy is commonly a beautiful young man, with a red necktie and an intricate system of cobwebs extending from his nose to his desk. When accidentally struck by the janitor's broom, he gives off a cloud of dust.
- DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of the disease by the patient's pulse and purse.
- DIAPHRAGM, n. A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from disorders of the bowels.
- DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
- DIE, n. The singular of "dice." We seldom hear the word, because there is a prohibitory proverb, "Never say die." At long intervals, however, some one says: "The die is cast," which is not true, for it is cut. The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet and domestic economist, Senator Depew:
- A cube of cheese no larger than a die
- May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.
- DISABUSE, v.t. The present your neighbor with another and better error than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.
- DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
- DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
- DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command.
- His right to govern me is clear as day,
- My duty manifest to disobey;
- And if that fit observance e'er I shut
- May I and duty be alike undone.
- Israfel Brown
- DISSEMBLE, v.i. To put a clean shirt upon the character.
- Let us dissemble.
- Adam
- DISTRESS, n. A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
- DRAGOON, n. A soldier who combines dash and steadiness in so equal measure that he makes his advances on foot and his retreats on horseback.
- DRAMATIST, n. One who adapts plays from the French.
- DRUIDS, n. Priests and ministers of an ancient Celtic religion which did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice. Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith. Pliny says their religion, originating in Britain, spread eastward as far as Persia. Caesar says those who desired to study its mysteries went to Britain. Caesar himself went to Britain, but does not appear to have obtained any high preferment in the Druidical Church, although his talent for human sacrifice was considerable.
Druids performed their religious rites 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.
- DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance; if awkwardly performed the most unexpected and deplorable consequences sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life in a duel.
- DULLARD, n. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows; tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art, literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower and made a favorable report of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois, but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.
E[edit]
- EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- EAVESDROP, v.i. Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and vices of another or yourself.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- EDIBLE, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- EDITOR, n. A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other -- which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog.
- EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.
- ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.
- ELECTRICITY, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning, and its famous attempt to strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most picturesque incidents in that great and good man's career.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of its economical application to some purposes is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved that it will propel a street car better than a gas jet and give more light than a horse.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- EMBALM, v.i. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be ornamenting his neighbor's lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose are languishing for a nibble at his glutoeus maximus.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- ENCOMIAST, n. A special (but not particular) kind of liar.
- ENOUGH, pro. All there is in the world if you like it.
Enough is as good as a feast -- for that matter Enougher's as good as a feast for the platter. Arbely C. Strunk
- ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- EPAULET, n. An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the enemy -- that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his death would give promotion.
- EPICURE, n. An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who, holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time in gratification from the senses.
- We know better the needs of ourselves than of others. To
- serve oneself is economy of administration.
- In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a
- nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal
- activity.
- There are three sexes; males, females and girls.
- Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this:
- they seem to be the unthinking a kind of credibility.
- Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be
- ashamed of.
- While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands
- you are safe, for you can watch both his.
- ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
- So wide his erudition's mighty span,
- He knew Creation's origin and plan
- And only came by accident to grief --
- He thought, poor man, 'twas right to be a thief.
- Romach Pute
- ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.
- EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi.
A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
- EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
- EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
- EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.
F[edit]
- FEAST, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic Church feasts are "movable" and "immovable," but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until they are full. In their earliest development these entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such were held by the Greeks, under the name Nemeseia, by the Aztecs and Peruvians, as in modern times they are popular with the Chinese; though it is believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were light eaters. Among the many feasts of the Romans was the Novemdiale, which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.
- FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.
- FICKLENESS, n. The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.
- FLOP, v. Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.
- FORCE, n.
- "Force is but might," the teacher said --
- "That definition's just."
- The boy said naught but through instead,
- Remembering his pounded head:
- "Force is not might but must!"
- FOREORDINATION, n. This looks like an easy word to define, but when I consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long lives in explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations; when I remember the nations have been divided and bloody battles caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination, and that millions of treasure have been expended in the effort to prove and disprove its compatibility with freedom of the will and the efficacy of prayer, praise, and a religious life, -- recalling these awful facts in the history of the word, I stand appalled before the mighty problem of its signification, abase my spiritual eyes, fearing to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently uncover and humbly refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace Bishop Potter.
- FORK, n. An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. Formerly the knife was employed for this purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether reject, but use to assist in charging the knife. The immunity of these persons from swift and awful death is one of the most striking proofs of God's mercy to those that hate Him.
- FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person -- a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
- FRIENDLESS, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
- FRYING-PAN, n. One part of the penal apparatus employed in that punitive institution, a woman's kitchen. The frying-pan was invented by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva. Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.