By "illustrated," the author here means big photos of himself with pithy examples of phonetically challenged Texas dialect. So, ideas? Ideas are created at some point in time--simple. Then, the passage of time and the varying cultural interests that must be appeased (like commercialbility) take ownership of that idea and tweaks and changes.
Now what interests me is the speed of that process. For example, Ambrose Bierce published a similar book all the way back in 1906 called the Devil's Dictionary which also was in simple term and sartorial definition framework. This volume was published in 1979.
Take the quote above from the Texas Dictionary which, while the entry is specifically regarding liars it is in a more general fashion directed insultingly at lawyers.liar--a person whose profession is to conduct lawsuits for clients.
Fine. Now allow me to show the entry for lawyer from the Devil's Dictionary.
LAWYER--one skilled in circumvention of the law.
Similar in tone sure, and maybe Everhart (author of Texas Dictionary) read Bierce at some point. Bierce's tome, best as I can discover, has never been out of print. So, more than seventy years after Bierce a series of more local subject in the same style is published. The idea has continued to exist but has been altered to fit what was obviously in retrospect (by the existence of four prior volumes) easily popular enough for justification. The idea decays, and some 15 years later Jeff Foxworthy is performing standup with placards of Southern phonetically mangled words like "Preshadit"--like "I'd preshadit if you didn't tell no one about how I acted after all that drinking last night."
Meanwhile the original thought exists like some early Platonic form, but noone cares. Currently the most popular version of Bierce's work is the 50th best selling Amazon title in the genre of educational reference titles that focus on idioms and slang. Yay!
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