The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary is a corrosively witty lexicon in which ordinary words are redefined to expose the hypocrisies of politics, religion, marriage, war, business, and literary culture. Composed in brief aphoristic entries, many first published in newspapers, it transforms the reference book into an instrument of satire. Its style is epigrammatic, paradoxical, and mordantly comic, belonging to the tradition of Swiftian invective while distinctly reflecting the skeptical energies of late ninet ...