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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Ambrose Bierce born (24-6-1842)
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 21:59:59 +1200
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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."