Pengarang: William Soisson

Bill Soisson has always loved words. In first grade, his teacher noticed that he had an unusually large working vocabulary. She gave him increasingly difficult tests in order to explore his talent. It wasn”t until he was examined at the eighth-grade level that little Soisson missed a single vocabulary answer. The word was “Sumperfla”d”. No correct synonym was provided among the possible answers. Did this spiteful and envious act of a primary school teacher cause our young hero to cry foul? Not at all. It merely caused him to embark on a lifelong search for the meaning of the word “sumperflad, ” and it was during his search that Soisson, after intensely studying Ambrose Bierce”s “Devil”s Dictionary, ” came up with the idea of “The Curmudgeon”s Dictionary” as a way of raising the money he needs to continue his quest. It also allows him to get a perverted sort of revenge on that now-Attzheimerish teacher by playing his own dirty tricks with words. As he matured, a philosophy degree at the University of Notre Dame and a law degree at Dickinson provided young Soisson first with insight and then chicanery regarding the use of words. The years he spent in Europe and Africa, using other languages, served to teach him to make a mess out of his own tongue. The discipline of writing for publication in such fields as international law and the Islamic and Bantu cultures taught him the use of words as “flatulence.” And along the way, he became an accomplished speaker before audiences of all sizes. When an interviewer asked whether he was comfortable speaking to large groups, Soisson responded, “Yes. It”s the listeners who are uncomfortable.” As for the future of his work, the scholarly Soisson says, “My aim is ultimately to destroy everyone”s pomposities, deceptions, and absurdities until I am the only person left with pomposities, deceptions, and absurdities.”