Bow Tie o’ the Day and I were flipping through Ambrose Bierce’s THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, which was first published in 1911. It provides what we might call somewhat silly, irreverent, “real” definitions of words. For example, the word “twice” is defined as “once too often.” Enjoy a few more words and their definitions, according to Bierce:
year: “A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.”
selfish: “Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.”
pain: “An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.”
mythology: “The body of a people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.”
habit: “A shackle for the free.”
fib: “A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s nearest approach to truth.”
admiration: “Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.”
acquaintance: “A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.”