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It's been 100 years since Ambrose Bierce, 19th century journalist, versifier, and short story writer ("An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is perhaps his best-known tale) published his sardonic, entertaining The Devil's Dictionary. Sample definitions: (1) "Neighbor--One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient." (2) "Emotion--A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes." There are no doubt thousands of new words in use in the 21st century that need that kind of clarifying. Here is my little attempt to supplement Bierce's great work.
Accountable Care Organization--An alternative to the traditional HMO "fee for service" model designed to reduce government payments to medical insurance companies by pressuring doctors to require fewer tests and office visits for their patients while pretending to promote wellness and identify health risks.
Adversity--A test of character that is good for other people.
App--One of some 400,000 software computer programs that runs on computers, tablets, and cell phones, and that also soon runs the lives of those who download them.
Arab Spring--Collective term for a number of 2011 revolutions in the Middle East in which populaces, exercising their newly-won democratic freedom to elect their own leaders, put advocates of repressive Sharia law into power.
Bath salts--Not what your grandma added to her bath tub for a relaxing soak but synthetic mood elevators taken orally or nasally, often while in hot tubs.
Best-seller--A book that appeals to the imagination of the unimaginative.
Bleak Thursday--For employees at Target, Sears, Kmart, Walmart, Best Buy, Kohls, and other corporation chain stores, the term for the despair they feel at the prospect of leaving hearth and home and bland comfort food to report for work on Thanksgiving evening to prepare for the frenzy of Black Friday.
Broker--An agent who is too smart to risk his own money but who gets rich on the commissions he receives from buying and selling securities for others; also, what the others are after making decisions to buy or sell based on the agent's advice.
Bud Lite--A misnomer; Even Lighter (than their normally insipid, watery brew) would be a more accurate term.
Casino--A huge room of bright lights, dirty carpets, and a myriad of gambling games devoted to the legalized theft of money from frenzied patrons who proudly consider themselves winners if they manage to lose less than they had budgeted to lose.
Cell phone--Updated version of a clunky instrument invented by Alexander Graham Bell, who believed that people might actually want to speak to each other from a distance, now used only for text-messaging, playing games, taking pictures, watching videos, and surfing the Internet by means of 400,000 different apps.
Class reunion--A gathering of old high school or college classmates with little in common but a dimly remembered past and a need to find out if the winners are still winners and the losers are still losers.
Collective bargaining--The practice of workers banding together to negotiate with employers for wages and working conditions, now a rare occurrence in the face of right-to-work laws, outsourcing, and budget slashing.
Credit default swaps--Ersatz legalized gambling by traders who have figured out a way to make money without having to produce a socially useful product or service.
Culture--Once, an anthropological term meaning the total way of life of a people; now a term indiscriminately and tiresomely applied to particular aspects of human life (as in these examples gleaned from recent newspaper articles: "a culture of unconstitutional activity," "a culture of bias," "a culture of carelessness," "a culture of hazing," "a culture of generosity," "a poor culture of safety," "a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations," "an anti-immigrant culture," "the culture of the university").
Dark skies--Areas which at night are free of light pollution, allowing clear visibility of the stars and planets--nonexistent in western Washington state, where gray skies prevail day and night.
Death--Inevitable ending for all individual animals and vegetables, the fear of which in humans underlies all religions and philosophies.
Dow Jones Industrial Average--A stock index of 30 major companies which rises and falls (as do the hopes and dreams of investors) on the whims of stock specialists (see below).
Euro--The Eurozone's official currency, not to be confused with the Yugo, although similar in stability.
Facebook--Social-networking website designed for narcissists who need to say "Hey, my life may be trivial but you can't deny that I exist" and for closet voyeurs who enjoy spying and prying.
Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac--Sibling government-sponsored corporations which succeeded so well at their job of expanding the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgages in the form of mortgage-backed securities that by 2008 banks had profligately over-lent, home-buyers had profligately overspent, and houses made of cards fell down all over America.
Flat tax--A system of taxation in which one tax rate is applied to all income with no deductions or exemptions allowed; much reviled by those who think that the more one earns, the more one is responsible for those who don't keep up with one.
Genetic engineering--Survival of the retrofittest.
Global-warming--An age of rising annual temperatures that may have life-changing consequences for humans, other animals, and plants that is welcomed by ordinarily change-fearing conservatives and feared by ordinarily change-welcoming liberals.
Hybrid car--A vehicle that runs on both gas and electricity whose global-warming phobic owners pretend not to be embarrassed by its ugly-duckling appearance or frustrated by its lack of power.
Hydraulic fracking--Modern high-pressure method of extracting oil from shale and the life's blood from environmentalists.
Justice--Revenge dressed up in formal clothes.
Medical marijuana--Smokescreening, physician-authorized usage of an illegal recreational drug by persons who seek to rise high above the pain of reality.
Mega Monday (or Titanic Tuesday, etc.)--The day after Christmas, the last day of shopping indulgence before January's guilt sets in, when merchants profit from the neurotic need of consumers to return the gifts they received for something they like better, or to add cash to the gift cards they received to purchase something more expensive, or to add cash to the cash they received to purchase something more expensive.
Men's college football or basketball coach--A molder of character in young people who will be fired if he doesn't post a winning record and who will leave his job for a more lucrative one if he does (synonyms include "temp worker," "carpetbagger," "hired gun," "cheater," "hypocrite").
Methanol--A nonce word, so far found only in this little dictionary, which refers to the subsidy-induced high felt by American corn growers when they receive payment for their politically correct but otherwise pointless product.
Modernizing rate structures--The act of jacking up utility prices because customers either (a) use too much power or (b) don't use enough.
Occupy--A sit-in protest by the occupation-less against the sharp economic disparity between the fat cats and the alley cats.
Operation Iraqi Freedom--An American-instigated war of choice in Iraq which resulted in freeing Iraqis from the domination of Saddam Hussein so they could engage in sectarian civil war and make themselves vulnerable to Iranian interference as well.
Payroll tax--Money contributed by employers and employees to the federal government ostensibly to be invested and given later to the elderly in the form of Social Security and Medicare payments but actually tossed into the general fund and used to pay for unnecessary wars.
Photo Shop--A computer program that makes it possible, through photo enhancements, to achieve virtual irreality.
Placebo--A medication or course of treatment that you believe in but I do not.
Stock specialist--A stock exchange member charged with making a market in certain stocks, ostensibly to insure that they are traded fairly and smoothly, whose dealings actually serve only to make the DJI, S&P, and NASDQ (as well as the stomachs of individual investors) bounce wildly.
Strategic default--The act of walking away from an upside-down mortgage and letting the bank take back one's house (also known as "shirking responsibility--just like the corporations do").
Super Bowl--NFL championship game, played after two weeks of media hype, whose one redeeming feature is the barrage of new TV commercials (what will Budweiser have those Clydesdales doing this time?), the broadcasting of which is watched by billions worldwide who know or care little about pro football but love an excuse to party.
Tattoo--Modern runic body art conveying memes for the text-messaging younger generation which has substituted "meme-os" for memos.
Tea Party--An American populist group whose members believe fervently in small government until they need help from a larger one.
Thanksgiving--An American holiday invented by the Puritans in gratitude for the bounty of their new land, characterized today by the gluttonous consumption of tasteless turkey and mashed potatoes, over-saged stuffing mix, cloying cranberry sauce and marshmallowed yams, and an anomalous wine that can't find anything on the table that it goes with.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association--A body that controls the athletic programs of 1,281 institutions and treats as its puppets 1,281 university and college presidents.
The 1%--The very richest percentage of the American population, all of whom are convinced that they became rich by means of their own talent, effort, or moral virtue and who believe that, although they are of course superior people, everyone could be in the top 1% if they only worked at it.
The 99%--The vast majority of the American population, all of whom are convinced that the very rich became so by exploiting them and that it's only fair and just that the wealth of the selfish 1% be redistributed by means of taxation to the more virtuous 99%.
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