Chamblee54

What follows are selections from The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Gwinnett 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 R to S. More selections are available. A – D E – G H – I J – L M – O P – R Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.
REVERENCE, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.
RIME, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad. The verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull. Usually (and wickedly) spelled “rhyme.”
RIOT, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of requiescat in pace, attesting an indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Dubious Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than reductus in pulvis.
ROAD, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome, to be to where it is futile to go, with a maximum of expense and aggravation.
RUM, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.
SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the Epistolarian teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.
SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
SCRIBBLER, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one’s own.
SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement. Spell check suggestions: appeasement, entrapment
SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.
SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
SLANG, n. The grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis) with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.