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Devilish   Listen
adjective
Devilish  adj.  
1.
Resembling, characteristic of, or pertaining to, the devil; diabolical; wicked in the extreme. "Devilish wickedness." "This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish."
2.
Extreme; excessive. (Colloq.)
Synonyms: Diabolical; infernal; hellish; satanic; wicked; malicious; detestable; destructive.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Devilish" Quotes from Famous Books



... blood-shedding," answered Mead. "Yet I see not that thou needst starve. There is no lack of honest employments, if a man will but seek them. 'Thou canst not serve two masters.' Our God is a God of peace. The devil is the god of war; and devilish work is fighting, as I can answer from experience, and so ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... in some passionate political attitude regarding Balkan affairs. I am not now prepared to take up the view of the fanatic Bulgar-worshippers who must not only exalt the Bulgarian nation as a modern Chosen People, but must represent Servian, Greek, and Turk as malignant and devilish in order to throw up in the highest light their ideas ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... said Curtis to me one day, "that that fellow Quite So is clear grit, and when we come to close quarters with our Palmetto brethren over yonder, he'll do something devilish?" ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... Dutch Reformed Church, who largely influence the leadership of the South African Dutch, ought to know that the English colonist can be just as devilish as the Boers on questions of colour; and that some of them, with their superior means and education have almost out-Boered the Boer in this matter; but that even they have been held in check by the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... savage, savage as a bear, savage as a tiger; ferine^, ferocious; inhuman; barbarous, barbaric, semibarbaric, fell, untamed, tameless, truculent, incendiary; bloodthirsty &c (murderous) 361; atrocious; bloodyminded^. fiendish, fiendlike^; demoniacal; diabolic, diabolical; devilish, infernal, hellish, Satanic; Tartaran. Adv. malevolently &c adj.; with bad intent &c n.. Phr. cruel as death; hard unkindness' alter'd eye [Gray]; homo homini lupus [Lat.] [Plautus]; mala mens [Lat.], malus animus [Lat.] [Terence]; rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Onety-oneth, and MacMull of the Greens, en route to Noirbourg," says Hicks, confidentially. "Know MacMull? Devilish good fellow—such a fellow ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... I've been up town and had a set-to with old Baucum and the rest of them. Pulled up fifty winner at poker and jumped. Devilish glad to see you; miss you every minute of the time I'm away. Let's go over there and sit down ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... is the account of an "extravagant," though not quite a fool, who is "coney-catched" in the old manner. But it opens in a fashion very different indeed from the old manner. "This money is certainly a most devilish thing! I'm sure the want of it had been like to ruin my dear Philibella!" and the succeeding adventures are pretty freshly told. The trick of headlong overture was a favourite with Afra. "The Adventure ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... stumbled into the trap which was Limbo, and had had a very definite part in breaking up that devilish installation, the crew of the Solar Queen had claimed as their reward the trading rights of Traxt Cam in default of legal heirs. And so here they were on Sargol with the notes left by Cam as their guide, and as much lore concerning the Salariki as was ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... 'Yes—and devilish glad of the chance,' replied the stranger, gazing at Fred Archer with much interest. Fred was a good looking young man, genteelly dressed, but with a ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... things before the war. It was this: that every year in the Slave States of America there were one hundred and fifty thousand children born into the world—born with the badge and the doom of slavery—born to the liability by law, and by custom, and by the devilish cupidity of man—to the lash and to the chain and to the branding-iron, and to be taken from their families and ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... that drinks At poet's pond, nicknam'd divine: Say what he will, I know he thinks That all he writes is devilish fine! ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... And the devilish malignity of Iago, whose coarse mind cannot conceive an affection founded purely in sentiment, derives from her love itself a strong argument ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... had not deceived me. It lay in readiness in the Mall, and, in what seemed devilish mockery of our ways, with a lighted head-lamp. The red-whiskered man went to the point at once, in a manner that showed he had been thinking over ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... as for the secrets of Satan, such as are suggestions to question the being of God, the truth of his word, and to be annoyed with devilish blasphemies; none more acquainted with these than the biggest sinners at their conversion; wherefore thus also they are prepared to be helps in the church to relieve ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... put his own hand upon her bared bosom, and felt the beat of her heart. "No," said Simon Orts, "you are not afraid. Now, listen: You lack time to drown in a sea of feathers. You are upon Usk, among men who differ from beasts by being a thought more devilish, and from devils by being a little more bestial; it is my opinion that the earlier you get away the better. Punshon has orders to pass Simon Orts. Very well; ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... power and dignity in the State, your hand was revealed in the opposition manifested to my marriage. Your cunning brain conceived the notion that I would not abandon the woman I loved for the sake of fifty Kingdoms. You read my mind aright; but, if it was you who brought about her flight, for what devilish reason did you depart from the subtle plot that might well have achieved your ends by means which you, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... devilish plot I ever heard of if you will excuse the expression," Mr. Palmer excitedly exclaimed, when his visitor had concluded ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... he had asked her three times a day ever since they met, and I, for one, hope that she'll think twenty times of him to once she thinks of that devilish John Montrose." ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... Hobbs was 'a devilish fine-looking woman;' there was something tangible in a woman like that, sir; she was not one of your flimsy, languid girls, with waist like the stem of a goblet. Somebody had said,'the nearer the bone the sweeter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to hear from me before, I suppose," the young man went on, "but the fact is I've had an idea for a story and I've been devilish busy sketching ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... and in the flicker of his eyes as he lifted them for one instant towards his master, I read the whole devilish cunning of the plot. They might securely let her go, as an Englishman's widow. The fact had merely to be proclaimed and the islanders would have none of her. I am glad to remember that—my brain keeping clear, albeit my pulse, already fast enough, leapt hotly ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... impostor, some clever rogue; and the Neapolitan shares booty, and puffs him off with all the hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous. An unknown adventurer gets into society by being made an object of awe and curiosity; he is devilish handsome; and the women are quite content to receive him without any other recommendation than his own ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... uttered, Avery knew not. It was such as she had never heard before. It was unearthly, it was devilish, a fiendish chorus that was like the laughter of a thousand demons—a ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... Sunday, Condy came to tea as usual; and after the meal, as soon as the family and Victorine had left the pair alone in the dining-room, they set about preparing for their morrow's excursion. Blix put up their lunch—sandwiches of what Condy called "devilish" ham, hard-boiled eggs, stuffed olives, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... a villainess muttering oaths; The bank and the safe and the will and the forgery— All of them built on traditional norms— Villainess dark and Lucrezia Borgery Helping the villain until she reforms; The old mill at midnight, a rapid delivery; Violin music, all scary and shivery; Plot that is devilish, awful, nefarious; Heroine frightened, her plight is precarious; Bingo!—the rescue!—the movement goes snappily— Exit the ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams

... expression, and of the sense of literary beauty. The matter of having anything to say, beyond a hash of other people's opinions, or of possessing any criterion of beauty, so that we may distinguish between the Godlike and the devilish, is left aside as of no moment. I think I do not err in saying that if science were made the foundation of education, instead of being, at most, stuck on as cornice to the edifice, this state of things ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... and stopped. An instant and the newcomer understood the scene and a curse sprang to his lips. Another instant and his own mustang was spurred in close by the strugglers. His right hand raised in air and bearing a heavy quirt, descended; not upon the broncho, but far across the cursing, devilish face of the man, its rider. Then swift as thought and simultaneously as twin machines, the hands of the intruder and of the struggling ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... instances, they exhibit various manifestations of hysteria. Goerres, with a charming degree of simplicity, details these symptoms and failing, under the influence of the predominant idea which fills him, to recognize their real character, ascribes them without hesitation to devilish agency. Thus ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... drank beer like Christians, and indeed manufactured most of it) and would pledge the old valour and the old victory of him whom they called the Protestant Hero. We should be using every word with literal exactitude if we said that he was really something devilish like a hero. Whether he was a Protestant hero or not can be decided best by those who have read the correspondence of a writer calling himself Voltaire, who was quite shocked at Frederick's utter lack of religion ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... power the Rogans had harnessed—a current, perhaps, that depolarized partly the atoms of the body structure? He could only guess. But the convulsed face of the unfortunate victim showed that the torment, whatever it was, was devilish to the last degree! ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... doesn't suit you," said he. "I see it doesn't, and I'm devilish sorry! Take my advice and try something milder; now do, to-morrow; for I should never forgive myself if it made you worse instead of better; and the air is too strong for ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... suddenly, and with such incredible swiftness had this happened, and so utterly unprepared were we for this devilish audacity, that the Erie had shoved his trade-rifle against my ribs and fired before anybody comprehended what ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... authorship, on the ground of the well-known story, which seems to have been then new to Rogers, and which Smith had been told by Gibbon, that on one occasion when Hamilton was on a visit at Goodwood, he informed the Duke of Richmond that there was a devilish keen letter from Junius in the Public Advertiser of that day, and mentioned even some of the points it made; but when the Duke got hold of the paper he found the letter itself was not there, but only an apology for its absence. From this circumstance Hamilton's name came to be mentioned ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... necessary to support his royal favorite's hideous cause, not only declares that the unhappy girl was guilty throughout, but lugs God into the tragedy, and makes Him responsible for what was, perhaps, the cruellest and most devilish of all the many murders perpetrated by Henry VIII. The luckless lady was but a child at the time she was devoured by "the jaws of darkness." At most she was but in her twentieth year, and probably she was a year or two younger than that age. Any other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... never apologetic," Osborn said dryly. "As a rule, they're not truculent, but they're devilish obstinate." ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... Angelique, "one cannot feign—the heart is not yet hardened, and is capable of compassion. But a dreadful idea occurs to me—a horrible suspicion! Is it all a devilish trick—a snare arranged in joke? Tell me that it is not all a pretence! A poor woman encounters so much perfidy. Men amuse themselves by troubling her heart and confusing her mind; they excite her vanity, they compass her round with homage, with ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... for to say that you're a born angel, wantin' nothin' but a pair o' wings to carry ye off to the better land—by no means, but I do know that as regards jinin' Buck Tom's boys, or takin' a willin' part in their devilish work, ye are innocent ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... was, as I told you, reedy and nasal. I knew it, of course, instantly. The answering voice spoke in those sweet tones which I recognized only too easily. The dialogue was only for a minute; the repulsive male voice laughed, I fancied, with a kind of devilish satire, and retired from the window, so that I almost ceased to ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... to attic, and with a cheerful, innocent smile sat watching them night and day. Madeline, fiercely calm, warned off the others, with pale lips and flashing eyes and bitter tongue, resenting en famille the devilish endearments she so sweetly suffered in company; but ever as she groped about in her soul's blindness she felt for the central props of that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... to do with art—art was either Pagan or Popish; and as for the centuries before the Reformation, they and all in them belonged utterly to darkness and the pit. As for the heroes of early Christianity, they were madmen or humbugs; their legends, devilish and filthy puerilities. They went to the artists and literary men, and received the same answer. The medieval writers were fools. Classical art was the only art; all painters before the age of Raphael superstitious bunglers. To be sure, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the tar, "have you not been at work to-day, that you look so devilish blue?" (working, by the bye, is the honest word used by those honest people for begging, they having as correct an idea of what is meant by respectable terms as their more ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... refuse this favor. He remembered, perhaps, at that time how that, sixteen years before, in writing to his lieutenant-general in Poitou to hand over to Balue, Bishop of Evreux, the property of a certain abbey, he said, "He is a devilish good bishop just now; I know not ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... character of what he called Dormer's predicament and on the fine suspense it was fitted to kindle in the breast of the truly discerning, that Peter wondered, as I have already hinted, if this insistence were not a subtle perversity, a devilish little invention to torment a man whose jealousy was presumable. Yet his fellow-pilgrim struck him as on the whole but scantly devilish and as still less occupied with the prefigurement of so plain a man's emotions. Indeed he threw a glamour of romance over ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... to himself ruefully. "He'll not let me get within half a mile of the Castle after this. If she doesn't come out for a stroll in the park, I fancy I'll never see her—Heigho! I wish something would happen! Why doesn't Marlanx begin bombarding? It's getting devilish monotonous here." ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his;—in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro' the annulus or noose made ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... Pharo proudly did not deny. "Dodrabbit ye, Pharo!" said our fond host, giving him another whirl, "yer hair 's pretty plumb 'fore, but she 's raked devilish well aft. Ye can't make no stand fer yerself! Ye're hungry, Pharo; ye're ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... "Oh! my God," said she, "what will mother say,—I'm ruined." "Well it's no use crying, you are in for it." A few tears, then a fuck, a piddle, a wash,—and then refreshed we go through the ceremony, of inspecting privates, and so fucking, looking, smelling, frigging, and finger-stinking we lay till devilish hungry. Then we got up, and after going to a chop-house and having food, I put her into a cab to go home. I enjoyed myself much that night, a fresh cunt is always charming, and there is such delight in killing modesty in a woman who has never been fucked before; the struggle ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... Bitherstone spoke to his fellow-sufferers. Upon that the Major stopped to notice and admire them; remembered with amazement that he had seen and spoken to them at his friend Miss Tox's in Princess's Place; opined that Paul was a devilish fine fellow, and his own little friend; inquired if he remembered Joey B. the Major; and finally, with a sudden recollection of the conventionalities of life, turned and apologised ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... black-visored figure waiting beside the block. As the doomed man dragged himself to the scaffold, how pale that face in the glass box must have been, for any courage that kept him above his fate. It was all very vivid, and the more incredible therefore that such a devilish thing as the death-punishment should still be, and that governments should keep on surpassing in the anguish they inflict the atrocity of the cruelest murderers. If the Salem-born Hawthorne ever visited ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... children, to be slaves to a wretched man like himself, who, instead of compensating him for his labours, chains, handcuffs and beats him and family almost to death, leaving life enough in them, however, to work for, and call him master? No! no! he would cut his devilish throat from ear to ear, and well do slaveholders know it. The bare name of educating the coloured people, scares our cruel oppressors almost to death. But if they do not have enough to be frightened for yet, it will be, because they can always keep us ignorant, and because God ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... When we study the chapters of Suetonius, we are forced to feel that, though the situation and the madness of Caligula were dramatically impressive, his crimes were trivial and, small. In spite of the vast scale on which he worked his devilish will, his life presents a total picture of sordid vice, differing only from pot-house dissipation and schoolboy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace and cloying, tedious to the tyrant, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... us one of these days shortly. We are engaged two or three Sundays deep, but always dine at home on week-days at half-past four. So come all four—men and books I mean—my third shelf (northern compartment) from the top has two devilish gaps, where you have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... Belly to earth, tail lashing from side to side, it was crawling slowly, imperceptibly nearer its prey. With ears flattened against the skull and lips drawn back to bare the gleaming fangs in a devilish grin it snarled at the brave child whose dauntless attitude doubtless ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... "It's a devilish trick of Nature's that she makes them stop coming at the very time that you want them most. Forty-five is not much more than ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... the council of inquisitors. So well-known is the scene that it scarcely requires description. It is too true a picture—an exhibition of devilish ingenuity of man when he desires to tyrannise over his fellow-creatures, unsurpassed in cruelty by the heathen or most barbarous nations of ancient or modern days. There sat the inquisitors in a gloomy vaulted ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... the youngest of us could perceive Boddy was bursting with devilish glee. Heriot got a letter posted to Julia. It was laid on his desk, with her name scratched completely out, and his put in its place. He grew pale and sad, but did his work, playing his games, and only letting his friends speak ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... foes without ....the crowds of tempters of both sexes, men and women who take a devilish pleasure in polluting innocent minds, ... the companions whose jeers are worse to face than a battery, ... the inconsistencies of so-called Christians, the anti-Christian literature which is peculiarly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... had not raised his voice a note, but I give you my word his eyes were devilish. He was a dangerous man in an ugly ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... must be devilish strong," I observed. "And I'm afraid I must have a cold in my head. ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... confidentially at his prisoners. "Between friends, it's ver' devilish unpleasant to do business with such a—what you call—ruffian. But ver' necessar'. Oh, ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... safe enough!" said Dixey. "And as for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run in debt, and gone off from her creditors. I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up shop, that her devilish scowl would frighten away ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to 'diplomatic courtesies' that when the truth-teller arrives, society 'takes a fit,' seeing its illusions vanish. Its would-be idols which have been proclaimed as made of pure gold, are found to be gilded clay, its devils not so devilish after all, and the daring act of the truth-teller is vigorously denounced by an age which calls ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... look of a thoroughly devilish business, as I told my eldest brother. "You see," said I, "the kind of thing it is. We had better call upon God to help us!" But try as I might to anathematise them in the name of God, my heart felt like breaking and no words would come. ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... two of the dullest witnesses. Another was drawing comic profiles of a sleepy juryman on a scrap of paper. He had previously dashed off a very happy sketch of the coroner, and shown it to that functionary, who had "haw-hawed," and pronounced it "devilish good," and, in turn, presented the young artist with a fine Havana cigar, which he playfully put in his mouth and chewed the end of. Yet there were, about these young gentlemen, signs of business, which an intelligent observer might ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... Satans made for woe o' men; * I fly to Allah from their devilish scathe: Source of whatever bale befel our kind, * In wordly matters ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Her intelligence instantly rejected the suggestion, but self-love snatched at it in justification. Wounded vanity makes incongruous alliances. "That would be devilish!" ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... been sent to heal the troubles in the Netherlands, the breach was now past mending. In the States General, as in the nation at large, there were still two parties, one for Orange and one for Philip, but both were determined to get rid of the devilish incubus of the Spanish army. The division of the two parties was to some extent sectional, but still more that class division that seems inevitable between conservatives and liberals. The king still had ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Clara, the housemaid, with a white jacket on so like her mistress's, that Rosa clutched her own convulsively, to see whether she had not been skinned of it by some devilish sleight-of-hand. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... good-fellowship and toleration which had early gained him popularity. His presence was nowhere a rebuke to whatever was going on. He was always accessible, often jocular. The younger members in the club said Henderson was a devilish good fellow, whatever people said. The President of the United States used to send for him and consult him, because he wanted no office; he knew men, and it was a relief to talk with a liberal rich man of so ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... and do worse to their wives and darters. Curse 'em! I shan't forget in a hurry that poor young thing as we see lying dead in the cabin of that American ship; and I'd burn the finest craft as ever was launched, afore they should have the chance to commit another sich a piece of devilish villainy. Now, Harry, lad, mind me, we do this here little piece of work. You've got hold of the eend of the right coil of idees, and I can see as your heart's set upon it; and I, Robert Trunnion, am the man as'll back ye up ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... torrent of rage, disdain, and hatred, which had been dammed up upon a former occasion when he was so unaccountably muzzled, broke forth with resistless and overwhelming force. He spoke for three hours, and delivered such an oration as no other man in existence is capable of: devilish in spirit and design, but of superhuman eloquence and masterly in execution. He assailed the Ministers with a storm of invective and ridicule; and, while he enveloped his periods in a studied phraseology of pretended ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... that Erminie can never forget crosses his face—a look of sublime love, checked by an expression of devilish rage and hatred. The two seem battling a ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... not say that his own interests were paid to him by formal letter through a law firm, and that he went in daily fear that his estranged and pious brother, now a pillar of the synagogue, would one day religiously appropriate the heretic's property, backed by who knew what devilish provision of Church or State, leaving him to starve. But he wondered throughout their walk why Dom Diego, who had such constant correspondence with Amsterdam, had never heard of his excommunication, and his bitterness came back as he realized that the ban had extended ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... with stilettos at times and with crude sandbagging, Or a brute belaying-pin; With a twisted cord I have frequently done my scragging, And doped with devilish gin; I remember once in a boarding-house racket at Rio How my snickersnee snicked clean in; And I booted a blackguard to death with consid'rable brio One ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various

... signature, Germany's honour, are not worth a rap when opposed to German interests. Germany, notwithstanding all her successes, is thirsting for peace. This armistice would be her salvation. She set herself out to get it—not honestly, as we have been led to believe, but by means of a devilish plot. She professed to be overawed by the peace desires of the Reichstag. The Pan-Germans professed a desire to give in to the Socialists. All lies! They encouraged Freistner to continue his negotiations ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Isora nor her home: perhaps the priest took care that it should be so; for, at that time, what with his devilish whispers and my own heart, I often scarcely knew what I was or what I desired; and I sat for hours and gazed upon the air, and it seemed so soft and still that I longed to make an opening in my forehead that it might enter there, and so cool and quiet the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the corridor illuminated between leaf and blossom walls. A grotesque lump of crystal leered at him from the heart of a tharsala lilly bed. The intricate carving of a devilish nonhuman set of features was a work of alien art. Tendrils of smoke curled from the thing's flat nostrils, and Hume sniffed the scent of a narcotic he recognized. He smiled. Such measures might soften up the usual civ Wass interviewed here. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... her once more in the full splendor of her youth and her royalty, before her star goes out in darkness. I will once more delight myself with her before I make her weep. Ah, know you, Douglas, that there is no enjoyment keener, more devilish, and more heavenly, than to see such a person who smiles and suspects nothing, while she is already condemned; who still adorns her head with roses, while the executioner is already sharpening the axe that is to lay ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... the fangs it screamed aloud in terror as only a horse can. The rider sprang from its back, and, to our horror, ran to the river's edge, thinking evidently to take refuge in our boat. But before ever he reached the water the devilish brutes were ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... Rathbawne Mills that the "Kenton City Record" made its long-remembered attack upon Lieutenant-Governor Barclay. The arraignment was one unparalleled for venom, even in the columns of that most notoriously scurrilous journal in the state, and, withal, there was about it a devilish ingenuity, a distortion of facts so slight as to defy refutation, and so plausible as to carry conviction. It was the last blow in the long series of discouragements which Barclay had suffered since his inauguration, and for the moment he was completely unmanned. He was at no loss, however, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... the door, opened it, entered the sitting-room. The other two had pulled open a folding bed and were lying in it, Jim's head on Maud's bosom, her arms round his neck. Both were asleep. His black beard had grown out enough to give his face a dirty and devilish expression. Maud looked far more youthful and much prettier than when she was awake. Susan put a cigarette between her lips, lit it, carried a box of cigarettes and a stand ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... and poor, thou bear'st man's form again, Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison, Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest; With staves and swords throng the willing servants of authority, Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite; Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures' talons, The nearest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their palms; Bruised, bloody, and pinion'd is thy body, More sorrowful ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... skirt-tance in ter pickernic parks for ter sick-baby fund, ant passin' ter hat arount afterwarts." And evil was being whispered of her—a pretty high price to pay for such small success; and it must be true, because she sometimes came home late at night in cabs, which are devilish, except ...
— Different Girls • Various

... have come to any good. I know him well. We went to school together here in Kensington. Under a light and agreeable exterior he concealed an obstinacy almost devilish. All the tricks and daredevil feats we heard of, he was at the head of them. After he grew up his eyes fell on you. For a time he was soberer. Then, perceiving that you were also his father's choice, he conspired against his father, repeatedly absconded, and gave that father great trouble to find ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... work before they obtained this success. They found that the King would not consent to their wishes without much opposition. They hit upon a devilish plan to overpower his resistance. Hitherto, they had only been occupied in pleasing him, in amusing him, in anticipating his wishes, in praising him—let me say the word— in adoring him. They had redoubled their attention, since, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... falchion was nothing more than a sword-shaped ax. Therefore, these were not tongues of steel which would whip their supple length one across the other and fill the air with the lightning of their play and the devilish beauty of their music. The vanquished would not taste the nice death of a spitted heart. There was yet the method of the stone-ax warriors in this battle, and he who fell would be a ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... "There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, "What if the devil himself should ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... way with devilish ingenuity through mazes of narrow streets, scattering with his hooter little groups of gibbering, swarthy foreigners, Aaron Thurnbrein, bent double over his ancient bicycle, sped on his way towards the Commercial Road and eastwards. With narrow cheeks smeared with dust, yellow ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to bring him farther. Bleeding and foaming at the mouth, his horrid teeth glistening amid the frothy, blood-flecked foam, he plants his strong curved fore-legs against the shelving bank, and tugs and strains at the rope with devilish force and fury. It is no use—the rope has been tested, and answers bravely to the strain; and now with a long boar spear, Pat cautiously descends the bank, and gives him a deadly thrust under the fore arm. With a last fiendish glare of hate and defiance, he springs ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... troops with whom the French had any rencounters were called by them Cossacks—a name which I have heard them repeat millions of times, and to which they never failed to add, that "the fellows had again set up a devilish hurrah." ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... to be. I don't like to be cock-sure, but I believe—I really do believe—that I've given him rather more than he expected. It's going to be a devilish good house, though I ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... said, "We'd rather stand on the barl, Mr. Rutledge." I knew what he meant. It wouldn't be like Tom Sawyer to go inside. And the sheriff laughed and said, "Well, I'll swan, have it your way. But mind you, I'm going to hide and hear what is said, for I want to hear what he says about all this devilish work. But if you tease him or say anything out of the way, I'll stop ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters

... of our friends and on our own part, or we should go all wrong. There is something truly fearful when we find that clearest-headed and soberest-hearted of men, the great Bishop Butler, telling us that all his life long he was struggling with horrible morbid suggestions, devilish is what he calls them, which, but for being constantly held in check with the sternest effort of his nature, would have driven him mad. Oh, let the uncertain, unsound, unfathomable human heart be wisely and tenderly driven! And as there are things which with the unsound horse ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... revenge. The dark-skinned fellow who may be flapping the flies away from you in the morning, and bearing your kicks and cuffs as though they were so many cates and caresses, may, in the evening, make one in a circle of Heathen monsters joined together to listen to the Devilish Incantations of the Obeah man,—to mingle in ceremonies most hideous and abominable, and of which perhaps that of swearing eternal Hatred to the White Race over a calabash that is made out of the skull of a new-born Babe, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge: He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. Coffins stood round, like open presses, That shawed the dead in their last dresses, And, by some devilish cantraip sleight, Each in its cauld hand held a light: By which heroic Tam was able To note, upon the haly table, A murderer's banes, in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns; A thief, new-cutted frae a rape— Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... know why I write all this, but how impossible life is. I think it really is a most devilish arrangement. No peace except in utter renounciation. And must one struggle through a peppery sequence of years just ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff

... "It's a devilish bad thing for the country," said Campbell. And even then, with all my fundamentally rotten sociological nostrums, I had a vague feeling that the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... chiefly in clairvoyance and powers of observation developed to a pitch that was almost superhuman, and the best of their weapons was poison in infinite variety, whereof the guild alone understood the properties and preparation. Therefore there was nothing strange, nothing unusual in this deed of devilish and cunning murder that the sight of its doing should stir him thus, and yet it did stir him. He was minded to stop the plot, to let things take ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... nothing for months but dedicate odes to her eyes,—to the deep, dark infinity of their luring, devouring beauty,—which seem to drop honey and poison from every arched hair of their fulsome lashes. Withal,—another devilish mischance,—she was dressed in black and wore a white silk ruffle, like myself. And her age? Well, she can not have passed her sixth lustrum. And really, as the Novelist would say in his Novel, she looks ten years younger.... To say we were attracted to each other were presumptuous: ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... a grievance against the policeman, who is paid a dollar for every strayed seaman he brings up to the Consular Courts for overstaying his leave, and so forth. Jack says that the little fellows deliberately hinder him from getting back to his ship, and then with devilish art and craft of wrestling tricks—'there are about a hundred of 'em, and they can throw you with every qualified one'—carry him to justice. Now when Jack is softened with drink he does not tell ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... increase evil. A tavern and general store-keeper by profession and more than prosperous for his station, he might have led the most peaceful and merry existence possible, but he absolutely had to be at enmity with God and the world, and to give free rein to a truly devilish humor, such as I have never come across ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... Mamma's remaining bonds were sold last October. Ah! the Rue de Provence is an expensive place! I have made an estimate, which is at home. Juliette is a charming woman, to be sure; she has not her equal, I am convinced; but she is expensive, devilish expensive." ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... times more heterogeneous—croaking, chirping, screeching, cawing, whistling, billing, cooing, cuckooing. "What a place to live in!" I thought, fresh as I was from town, "where, if there are noises, one knows something of their meaning—maledictory, yea, devilish as it often is, expressive of the passions of men which will never sleep. But these! what could one make of such a tintamarre? Nothing but the reflection—that is, if you happen to be a philosopher, which, thank God, I am not—that not one note of all this rural oratorio is without its ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... on the gun. A snake, probably, had disturbed the bird. Or some of those devilish little crimson ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... decay which should be its only legitimate preparation, are not contrary to a right conception of either. But instead of sitting down meekly under what godly folks call "mysterious dispensations" of the Divinity, I think, if I took their view of such unaccountable inflictions, I should call them devilish rather than Divine, and certainly go mad, or very bad. Bearing the righteous result of our own actions, while we suffer, we can adore the mercy that warns us from evil by its unavoidable penalties, at the same time ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... at the Chien Noir," went on Commines, ignoring the retort; "you are in the King's service and have been paid with your life. Why are you not faithful? Under your very eyes a devilish scheme is hatched and you see nothing. Are you a fool, or have you grown besotted in your age? And you, Stephen, you who were given a free hand in Amboise for this very thing, you who have spent your ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... checked the laughter which rose spontaneously to her lips. The circumstances were too grotesque, the contrast too violent, for subdued mirth. The man a debased specimen of one of the most primitive races of the earth, and of an ugliness which was simply devilish; the woman of high degree, beautiful, accomplished. She thought that her first moment's consideration of the outrage—it was nothing less in her eyes—had given her the full material for thought. But every instant ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... blacker and blacker, a heart-rending, almost maddening sound of shrieking and crying rang out from that devilish wreck, so loud and piercing that it drowned the clatter of stones, the crackling of the fast-kindling coals, and the crushing noise of the metals. At the cry for aid of the doomed victims, all who had escaped and hidden behind the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... running from one extreme to the other. We by no means permit everything. For instance, we never permit the formal intention of sin, for the mere sake of sinning, and we will have nothing to do with anyone who persists in seeking evil as an end in itself, for that is a devilish intention, in whatever age, sex, or rank it may be found. But so long as there is no such unhappy disposition as that, we try to put in practice our method of directing intention, which consists in proposing a lawful object as the end of one's actions. In so far as it is in our power, we turn ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... like a picture puzzle. It seemed quite certain to all of them that this insignificant and scared little man whom they had been examining could never have prepared so ingenious and intricate a design. No, it must really be that some master mind, some devilish intriguer was at work to spread red ruin in ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... devilish kind of Spanish burgundy, warranted free from added alcohol: a Temperance burgundy in fact. Its richness in natural ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... have thought it? a parson!—devilish good indeed! How it will tell at Murkey's! What a metamorphose! if it don't stagger 'em, nothing will! It's the best thing I've done yet! I shall have to do it over a hundred times, and must get up a sermon or two beforehand, and swear that I preached them—and, egad! I may have to ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... over Red Wull, who still lay like a dead thing. As his master handled him, the button-tail quivered feebly; he opened his eyes, looked about him, snarled faintly, and glared with devilish hate at the gray dog and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... they. "But he that cometh from heaven is above all!" (John 3:31) These are they that our king has taken captive, and hath rid (in his chariots of salvation) in triumph over their necks. These are they, together with all others, whose most devilish designs he can wield, and turn and make work together for his ransomed's advantage (Rom 8:28), There is a height, an infinitely overtopping height in the mercy and goodness of God for us, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan



Words linked to "Devilish" :   diabolic, diabolical, playful, mephistophelean, mephistophelian, rascally, roguish, evil



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