The
Devil's Dictionary
By
Ambrose Bierce
Z
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ZANY, n.
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A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated
with ludicrous incompetence the buffone, or clown, and was therefore
the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters
of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we
to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example
of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen
of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop,
who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.
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ZANZIBARI, n.
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An inhabitant of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, off the eastern
coast of Africa. The Zanzibaris, a warlike people, are best known in this
country through a threatening diplomatic incident that occurred a few years
ago. The American consul at the capital occupied a dwelling that faced
the sea, with a sandy beach between. Greatly to the scandal of this official's
family, and against repeated remonstrances of the official himself, the
people of the city persisted in using the beach for bathing. One day a
woman came down to the edge of the water and was stooping to remove her
attire (a pair of sandals) when the consul, incensed beyond restraint,
fired a charge of bird-shot into the most conspicuous part of her person.
Unfortunately for the existing entente cordiale between two great
nations, she was the Sultana.
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ZEAL, n.
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A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.
A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
When Zeal sought Gratitude
for his reward
He went away exclaiming: "O my
Lord!"
"What do you want?" the Lord asked,
bending down.
"An ointment for my cracked and
bleeding crown."
Jum Coople
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ZENITH, n.
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The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing
or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered
as having a zenith, though from this view of the matter there was once
a considerably dissent among the learned, some holding that the posture
of the body was immaterial. These were called Horizontalists, their opponents,
Verticalists. The Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished by Xanobus,
the philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist. Entering an assembly
of philosophers who were debating the matter, he cast a severed human head
at the feet of his opponents and asked them to determine its zenith, explaining
that its body was hanging by the heels outside. Observing that it was the
head of their leader, the Horizontalists hastened to profess themselves
converted to whatever opinion the Crown might be pleased to hold, and Horizontalism
took its place among fides defuncti.
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ZEUS, n.
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The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter
and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who
have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have
penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these
four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work
on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each
having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
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ZIGZAG, v.t.
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To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one
carrying the white man's burden. (From zed, z, and jag,
an Icelandic word of unknown meaning.)
He zedjagged so uncomen
wyde
Thet non coude pas on eyder syde;
So, to com saufly thruh, I been
Constreynet for to doodge betwene.
Munwele
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ZOOLOGY, n.
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The science and history of the animal kingdom, including
its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoology
was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has
not come down to us. Two of the science's most illustrious expounders were
Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we learn (L'Histoire
generale des animaux and A History of Animated Nature) that
the domestic cow sheds its horn every two years.
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