devil
Noun pluraldevils
Pluraldevils
Formsdevils
- 1In theology, Satan: the chief of all the devils.
In the legend, a desperate musician sells his soul to the Devil for fame.
Medieval theologians debated whether the Devil could act without God's permission.
OppositeGod
Note
A title for one being rather than a word for a kind: it always takes the definite article, has no plural, and is often capitalized as the Devil. Theology sets him against God as the head of the fallen spirits, while an evil creature can be any one of many devils, which is why a story can mention devils in the plural but only one Devil.
- 2An evil supernatural being seen as the embodiment of a hostile, destructive force.
Believers spoke of a devil whose only aim was to corrupt the faithful.
Ancient texts describe a devil locked in eternal struggle against the divine.
Similardemon
Note
Every other use of the word grows from this one. It came through Latin diabolus from Greek diábolos, a compound of the prefix dia- and the verb bállō. Theology means a being here, not the horned cartoon figure. Demon is its nearest synonym, and it has two opposites: angel, its counterpart among spirits, and god, the power it stands against.
- 3A wicked or naughty person, or someone full of reckless, spirited energy, often said of a lively young child.
The twins are sweet, but the older one is a little devil.
He grinned like a devil who had just gotten away with something.
Similarrascal, scamp, imp, scoundrel
Note
The word runs from fond to fierce. Beside imp, scamp and rascal it is affectionate, the right word for kids let loose in a toy store. Beside scoundrel it can be a real charge against an adult. Tone and a qualifier usually settle which, and little devil leans indulgent. Its opposites, angel and saint, are the well-behaved child's labels.
- 4A cartoonish image of a red or orange man with horns, a pointed goatee, a long tail, and a pitchfork, used to represent evil and discourage children from misbehaving.
Above the warning sign, a horned devil leered down at passersby.
Her costume turned her into a tiny devil, pitchfork and all.
Oppositeangel
Note
Folklore's devil is a costume, not a theology. Horns, goatee, tail and pitchfork make the figure readable at a glance, which is why it suits warnings aimed at children. When someone describes what a devil looks like, or dresses up as one, they mean this image rather than the evil being of religious thought.
- 5A person, especially a man, referred to with a particular feeling about him, most often in the expressions 'poor devil' and 'lucky devil'.
Some poor devil had to clean up the whole mess alone.
She married a millionaire, the lucky devil.
Note
The noun is nearly empty in this use, and the adjective does the work. Poor devil carries pity, lucky devil a mild envy, and the speaker's opinion is the whole point. It is gentler than the British bugger and sod, which fill the same frame more coarsely. That makes devil the safe choice when the feeling, not the insult, is what you mean.
- 6A carnivorous marsupial native to Tasmania, with black fur, a stocky build, and an exceptionally powerful bite; short for Tasmanian devil.
Rangers tracked a devil through the eucalyptus forest after dark.
A devil's jaws are powerful enough to crush bone and cartilage.
- 7The wicked side of one's conscience, set against the good side represented by the angel.
Every time he tried to behave, a devil tugged him back toward temptation.
Her angel said apologize, but the devil told her to walk away proud.
Oppositeangel, conscience
Note
Here the devil is a voice inside rather than a being outside. It sits naturally in a possessive frame, as in the devil in me, the devil in her. That frame lets a speaker own a bad impulse while holding it at arm's length. Its opposites are angel and, tellingly, conscience itself, as if this voice stood outside conscience altogether.
- 8Something awkward or difficult to do or understand.
That old engine is a devil to start on cold mornings.
Folding a fitted sheet neatly is a devil of a task.
Similarbugger, bastard, stinker
Oppositecakewalk
Note
Among a rough family of synonyms, this is the polite member. Bastard, bitch, stinker and the British bugger can describe a stubborn problem the same way, but devil is the one that is safe in front of anyone. Its opposites come from the easy end: piece of cake and, in American use, cakewalk. It often takes an infinitive: a devil to start, a devil to fold.
- 9A small, whirling column of wind that picks up dust and debris from the ground; short for dust devil.
A devil of dust twisted over the desert highway in the midday heat.
The afternoon sun spawned a devil that scattered grit across the campsite.
Similarwhirlwind
Note
The word is clipped from dust devil, and writers once fenced it off. H. F. Blandford's Indian Meteorologist's Vade-mecum (1877) and Richard F. Burton's The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) both put "devils" in inverted commas. Burton calls them pillars of sand, and Blandford ties their formation to tornadoes and waterspouts. On its own, the short form reads best against a dusty or desert backdrop.
Less common meanings
- 10To prepare a side dish by removing the yolks from halved boiled eggs, blending them with condiments and spices, and spooning the mixture back into the whites.
He deviled the eggs with mustard, paprika, and a dash of vinegar.
Could you devil the eggs while I finish the salad?
- 11To grill or season food heavily with hot spices such as cayenne pepper.
The chef deviled the kidneys with cayenne and black pepper.
Devil the shrimp with chili and serve them hot.
Note
This is the cook's verb behind the peppered dish. Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) gives it lively company: fowls' legs "devilled, peppered, grilled, and tormented." The joke works because the verb already hints at torment. It is the general method, and ham and eggs are deviled along the same spicy lines.
- 12Hell, occurring chiefly in exclamations such as telling someone to go to the devil.
She told the salesman to go to the devil and slammed the door.
Let the contract go to the devil. I'm done negotiating.
Note
A softened stand-in for hell, it always takes the article: what the devil, what in the devil, go to the devil, a devil of a time. As an intensifier it adds force to a question without tipping into swearing. It belongs with heck, deuce and dickens. Hell is the word it replaces, and the vulgar fuck sits at the far end of the same slot.
What the devil is that?
She is having a devil of a time fixing it.
- 13To finely grind cooked ham or other meat and blend it with spices and seasonings.
The chef likes to devil ham with paprika, mustard, and a dash of vinegar.
We deviled the turkey and spread it on crackers.
- 14
- 15A broiled dish, often a bone with meat still on it, heavily seasoned with cayenne or other hot pepper.
He prepared a devil from last night's leftover bones, broiling them under a thick coat of cayenne.
A proper devil arrives at the table charred and fiercely peppered.
Note
A dish of the gridiron, it turns up in Walter Scott's Guy Mannering (1815) among cooks "preparing devils on the gridiron" beside others baking and roasting oysters. The defining touch is cayenne, heaped on past ordinary seasoning. The noun names the finished plate, while the cooking verb names what was done to it.
- 16To make something resemble a devil, or to invest it with a devil's character.
The painter chose to devil the figure, twisting its features into something monstrous.
Propaganda deviled the enemy, painting them as creatures of pure malice.
Similardemonize
Note
One spelling rule covers every verb use of the word. American English writes deviled and deviling with a single l, British English doubles it to devilled and devilling, and devils is the same everywhere. The doubled form shows up in Galsworthy's "devilled" and Durrell's "devilling." Pick one system and keep to it across the whole text.
- 17An assistant employed in a printing house to help the workers with their tasks.
The young devil spent his days inking type and running proofs across town.
Every printing house kept a devil to handle the dirtiest chores.
Similarapprentice, assistant
Note
The word is a clipping of printer's devil, the full name of the job. It could be warm as well as wry. In Andrea Levy's The Long Song (2010), a character is eager to show "what a good little devil he became" in the print office. That is the same indulgent tone the word takes for a mischievous child.
- 18To work as an unpaid, unrecognized assistant to a lawyer or writer.
She chose to devil for a famous novelist while learning the craft.
Before establishing himself, he deviled in a busy chambers.
Similarintern
Note
An intransitive verb of apprenticeship: one devils for someone, or at a place, but never devils something. Lawrence Durrell's Livia (1978) has a character "devilling at the Consulate" one afternoon a week, keeping the petty-cash box in order. That humble work is the point. Once the object is the text itself, the verb has crossed into its ghostwriting sense.
- 19To ghostwrite: to author a work while serving as an unrecognized assistant for someone else.
For two seasons he deviled the columns that bore his employer's byline.
She agreed to devil the memoir for a modest flat fee.
Similarghostwrite, ghost
Note
Here the verb takes an object, and the object is work done in someone else's name. John Galsworthy's Conscience (1922) asks whether "briefs and pleadings" were not "devilled," setting the practice beside speeches written by secretaries and legal opinions drafted by juniors. The passive comes naturally, because what matters is that the work was devilled, not who did it.
- 20A cycling endurance race in which riders trailing at the back are eliminated at set intervals.
The track program closed with a devil that thinned the field lap by lap.
He got knocked out early in the devil after a slow start.
Note
Cycling slang, it is best kept for race programs and riders' talk, and outsiders will need it explained. The format nearly explains itself: fall to the back and you are gone. A first mention for a general reader can gloss it in passing, as in "a devil, an elimination race."
- 21A mischievous spirit said to haunt printing works and cause their mishaps.
Compositors swore a devil lurked among the type, scattering letters when no one watched.
Every smudged proof was laid at the feet of the workshop's devil.
Note
Indian English gives the printing works a resident ghost, a poltergeist rather than a person. It shares both its workplace and its name with the printer's assistant, so context has to settle which is meant. A devil who runs errands is human; a devil blamed for every mishap at the press is not.
- 22A barren, unproductive stretch of land that lies unused.
The old map marked a devil where the soil had turned to useless clay.
Sheep wandered across the devil, finding little to graze on.
Similarwasteland
Note
This dialect word lives in compounds such as devil strip, where it marks a stretch of ground as good for nothing. In a compound it reads naturally, because the other element names the kind of ground meant. Used alone, as a plain noun for wasteland, it will puzzle readers outside the dialects that keep it.
- 23A machine for tearing or cutting rags, cotton, and similar materials, used in making mungo or shoddy.
The mill's devil tore worn blankets into fluff within seconds.
They fed cotton waste into the devil to recover usable fibers.
Similarshredder
Note
A mill machine with teeth, it appears in Henry J. Spooner's Wealth from Waste (1918) with spiked rollers that tear woollen things to pieces. The torn fiber was cleaned, spun with new wool and woven into shoddy, which Spooner calls a full-bodied but flimsy fabric. The machine and the shredding verb belong to the same trade.
- 24To shred fabric into its fibers for recycling, as when making mungo or shoddy.
The factory deviled tons of discarded uniforms into raw fiber each week.
Rag merchants would devil worn cloth to supply the shoddy trade.
Similarshred
Note
The verb does what the rag-tearing machine does. Henry J. Spooner's Wealth from Waste (1918) notes that tailors' clippings and remnants of fine woollen goods, such as broadcloth, are devilled and spun into a nicer cloth called mungo. So the quality of what goes in decides what comes out.
- 25Short form of devil seam.
An old sailor had to pay the devil with hot pitch in rough weather.
The carpenter knelt in the bilge to seal the devil before launch.
Note
Shipwrights clip devil seam to this, and the seam is not always placed in the same spot. One account puts it between the garboard strake and the keel. Another makes it the curved seam where deck planking meets the side, near the scupper gutters. Both agree it is particularly difficult to caulk, the same idea behind the "awkward task" meaning.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of devil apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From Middle English devil, from Old English dēofol, from Latin diabolus, ultimately from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos, "false accuser, slanderer"), also used to mean "Satan." It derives from διαβάλλω (diabállō, "to slander"), literally "to throw across," from διά (diá, "through, across") plus βάλλω (bállō, "throw"). The Old English word was probably adopted under the influence of Latin diabolus.