Re: Ambrose Bierce born (24-6-1842)

On 26/06/2024 6:31 p.m., Aidan Kehoe wrote:

   Ar an séú lá is fiche de mí Meitheamh, scríobh Ross Clark:
   > American short story writer, journalist, poet.
  > - Civil War veteran
  > - author of a very famous story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
  > - time and place of death unknown; last heard from in Mexico, December 1913
  >
  > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce
  > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge
  >
  > - oh, and of course, the often-quoted _The Devil's Dictionary_ (originally
  > called _The Cynic's Word Book_) -- cynical, sometimes amusing, definitions of
  > ordinary words
  >
  > "
  > LANGUAGE: the music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's
  > treasure.
  > DICTIONARY: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a
  > language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a
  > most useful book. "
 “He was of entirely English ancestry: all of his forebears came to North
America between 1620 and 1640 as part of the Great Puritan Migration.[17] He
often wrote critically of "Puritan values" and people who "made a fuss" about
genealogy.[18] He was the tenth of thirteen children, [...]”
 Not a fertility rate seen much in England at the moment!
 

Forgot to mention:
(Crystal) "I wonder where this lexicographical impulse came from? Possibly relevant is the fact that his father gave all thirteen of his children names beginning with A: Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, Aurelia."