Chamblee54

What follows are selections from The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce. A good many things could be said about Mr. Bierce. TDD began as a newspaper column, and was later published as The Cynic’s Word Book. TDD is in the public domain. TDD is a dictionary, going from A to Z. Today’s selection covers M to O. More selections are available. (A – D E – G H – I J – L) Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
MACHINATION The method employed by one’s opponents,
in baffling one’s open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.
MAD It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials,
destitute of evidence that themselves are sane.
MAGIC An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.
MAGPIE A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.
MAN An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
MANICHEISM The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.
MANNA A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness.
When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil,
fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.
MARTYR One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.
MAUSOLEUM The final and funniest folly of the rich.
MAYONNAISE One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
MENDACIOUS Addicted to rhetoric.
MERCY An attribute beloved of detected offenders.
MINE Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.
MISFORTUNE The kind of fortune that never misses.
MONDAY In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
NON-COMBATANT A dead Quaker.
NONSENSE The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.
OATH In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity,
made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.
OCCIDENT The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call “war” and “commerce.”
These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.
OFFENSIVE Generating disagreeable emotions or sensations,
as the advance of an army against its enemy.
OMEN A sign that something will happen if nothing happens.
ONCE Enough.
OPERA A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes. All acting is simulation, and the word simulation is from simia, an ape; but in opera the actor takes for his model Simia audibilis (or Pithecanthropos stentor)—the ape that howls.
OPPORTUNITY A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
OPTIMIST A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
ORTHODOX An ox wearing the popular religious yoke.
OVEREAT To dine.
Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess, Well skilled to overeat without distress!
Thy great invention, the unfatal feast, Shows Man’s superiority to Beast. John Boop
OVERWORK A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.