Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce (born 24 June 1842) was a Union Army veteran turned San Francisco newspaperman, short-story writer and satirist, best known for An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and for the mordant lexicon first published in October 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book and reissued in 1911 as The Devil’s Dictionary. He was last heard from in a letter dated 26 December 1913, written from Chihuahua, Mexico, and is generally given as having died around 1914. That reputation — the man who wrote cynical dictionary definitions — is precisely why an ownerless cynical dictionary definition eventually landed on him; but the words “umbrella” and “parasol” do not occur anywhere in The Devil’s Dictionary, which has no entry for bank or banker at all.