Chap­ter N begins with Bierce’s take on Nec­tar, the myth­i­cal drink of the gods, ren­dered here as a lost recipe that mod­ern drinkers in Ken­tucky may have acci­den­tal­ly stum­bled upon. His tone light­ly mocks the human ten­den­cy to roman­ti­cize ancient myth while indulging in earth­ly plea­sures that serve sim­i­lar pur­pos­es. Bierce trans­forms nec­tar from a sym­bol of divine vital­i­ty to a joke about strong spir­its, link­ing the sacred and pro­fane through satire. This sets the stage for the chapter’s inter­play between ele­vat­ed ideas and their flawed, human man­i­fes­ta­tions. In this frame­work, ideals are rarely immune to human fol­ly.

The def­i­n­i­tion of Negro is both direct and lay­ered, reveal­ing how race has been politi­cized and sim­pli­fied in Amer­i­can dis­course. Bierce cri­tiques polit­i­cal par­ties for using the term as a token rather than address­ing the com­plex­i­ty of iden­ti­ty and inequal­i­ty. His choice to reflect the ten­sion rather than resolve it invites read­ers to con­sid­er how lan­guage can obscure deep­er social issues. With­out offer­ing a solu­tion, he lays bare the fail­ure of insti­tu­tion­al empa­thy and the reduc­tion of iden­ti­ty to pol­i­cy. Through this, Bierce expos­es how pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion often side­steps uncom­fort­able truths with san­i­tized lan­guage.

Turn­ing to Neigh­bor, Bierce plays with the bib­li­cal com­mand to “love thy neigh­bor,” pair­ing it with the real­i­ty that neigh­bors often serve as a source of irri­ta­tion or con­flict. This con­tra­dic­tion cap­tures his broad­er theme: that moral ideals fre­quent­ly crum­ble under dai­ly inter­ac­tion. While soci­ety preach­es love, human behav­ior tends to favor bound­aries and excep­tions. His satir­i­cal tone points to the hypocrisy with­in com­mu­nal liv­ing, where civil­i­ty masks sus­pi­cion. The def­i­n­i­tion humor­ous­ly reflects the ten­sion between prox­im­i­ty and pri­va­cy in mod­ern rela­tion­ships.

Bierce approach­es Nihilism not as a phi­los­o­phy of despair, but as an exag­ger­at­ed refusal to find val­ue in any­thing. He frames it as the men­tal escape hatch of those who find the world too absurd to engage with sin­cere­ly. While it may appear intel­lec­tu­al, Bierce sug­gests it is often an excuse to reject respon­si­bil­i­ty or con­nec­tion. By flat­ten­ing deep thought into pos­ture, he cri­tiques the hol­low edge of rad­i­cal skep­ti­cism. In con­trast, Nir­vana is ren­dered as the final goal of detachment—emptiness mis­tak­en for peace. Bierce treats this East­ern spir­i­tu­al idea with a sim­i­lar cyn­i­cism, sug­gest­ing that escape from suf­fer­ing can look sus­pi­cious­ly like denial.

The word Noise gets reframed as civilization’s nat­ur­al byproduct—ever-present and increas­ing­ly mean­ing­less. What once sym­bol­ized cel­e­bra­tion or warn­ing now rep­re­sents clut­ter. Bierce implies that as soci­eties evolve, the sig­nal-to-noise ratio drops: more sound, less clar­i­ty. The entry reflects on the mod­ern world’s ten­den­cy to con­fuse loud­ness with impor­tance. In this light, Non­sense becomes not just false­hood, but a kind of camouflage—words used to dis­tract or over­whelm rather than inform. Bierce shows how non­sense often pass­es for intel­li­gence when deliv­ered with con­fi­dence or flair.

Polit­i­cal lan­guage comes under scruti­ny next. Nom­i­nate is described as the act of choos­ing some­one to endure pub­lic crit­i­cism under the illu­sion of pub­lic trust. The Nom­i­nee is framed not as a leader but as a scape­goat-in-wait­ing, bound for both praise and even­tu­al dis­ap­point­ment. Bierce reduces polit­i­cal ele­va­tion to per­for­mance, strip­ping away the pre­tense of noble intent. His def­i­n­i­tions remind us how much of gov­er­nance is built on spec­ta­cle rather than ser­vice. The wit lies in pre­sent­ing ambi­tion as self-destruc­tion dis­guised as duty.

In defin­ing Nov­el, Bierce dis­miss­es the lit­er­ary form as an extend­ed anec­dote too long for the telling. He implies that many nov­els sub­sti­tute vol­ume for insight, stretch­ing shal­low ideas over hun­dreds of pages. His jab ques­tions whether fic­tion enlight­ens or mere­ly enter­tains. It reflects a skep­ti­cism toward pop­u­lar art that prizes mar­ketabil­i­ty over mean­ing. Like­wise, Novem­ber becomes a metaphor for emo­tion­al fatigue, cast as a month that damp­ens the soul. Bierce links the cal­en­dar to human moods, point­ing to the way exter­nal rhythms shape inter­nal states.

Every entry under “N” fol­lows Bierce’s pat­tern of under­min­ing what we assume to be sacred, noble, or wise. He peels back each word to expose its con­tra­dic­tion, show­ing how lan­guage often cloaks con­ve­nience as virtue. His humor is nev­er emp­ty; it chal­lenges read­ers to rec­og­nize the flawed log­ic behind com­mon­ly accept­ed truths. By refram­ing these terms, Bierce forces an hon­est re-eval­u­a­tion of social ideals. In his hands, the dic­tio­nary becomes a mirror—one that reflects not how we define words, but how those words define us.