The Devil's Dictionary

Although the origins of the Devil's Dictionary are normally placed in 1881 (the point at which Bierce himself said it began) the idea started in August 1869 when Bierce, short of topics to write about and having recently bought a new copy of Webster's Unabridged dictionary, suggested the possibility of writing a "Comic Dictionary". He quoted the entry from Webster's for Viceregent and italicised the section, Kings are sometimes called God's viceregents. It is to be wished they would always deserve the appellation He then suggested how Noah Webster might have used his talent in a comic form and it was here that the idea of a Comic Dictionary was born. The idea manifested itself in 1875 when Bierce, who had resigned as the Town Crier and had spent three years in London, returned to San Francisco in the hope of regaining his earlier journalistic post in the News Letter.