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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



... been betraying one another for less than this since the world began. There was once a certain Judas who carried out a plan of betrayal for a far smaller figure. But tell me. Have you never associated Gualtier and Hilda in your thoughts as partners in this devilish plot?" ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... but has come away with a proper conviction that Richard is a very wicked man, and kills little children in their beds, with something like the pleasure which the giants and ogres in children's books are represented to have taken in that practice; moreover, that he is very close and shrewd, and devilish cunning, for you could ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... happenings were recorded and believed. Trial by ordeal, following careful religious formulae, was common before 1200, though prohibited shortly afterward by papal decrees (1215, 1222). The insistence of the Church on "the willful, devilish character of heresy," and the extension of heresy to cover almost any form of honest doubt or independent inquiry, caused an intellectual stagnation along lines of scientific investigation which was not relieved for more than a thousand years. The many notable advances in ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... really knows nothing!" said he to himself. "This Heinrich is my evil angel! might he only die soon!" It was in Otto's soul as if he could shoot a ball through Heinrich's heart. "Did he only lie buried under the heather, and with him my secret! I will have blood! yes, there is something devilish in man! Were Heinrich only dead! But others live who know my birth,—my sister! my poor, neglected sister, she who had the same right to intellectual development as myself! How I fear this meeting! it will be bitter! I must away. I will hence—here will my life-germ be stifled! I have indeed ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... improvements; I, of course, expressed myself highly grateful for his condescension. Going out, I met Strangeways. 'So you're going to read out to-day, Ruskin. Do go it at a good rate, my good fellow. Why do you write such devilish good ones?' Went a little farther and met March. 'Mind you stand on the top of the desk, Ruskin; gentlemen-commoners never stand on the steps.' I asked him whether it would look more dignified to stand head or heels uppermost. He advised heels. Then met Desart. ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... had a fine classic taste, and sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the pleasant green arbours along with that polite nobleman. Bute was hated with a rage of which there have been few examples in English history. He was the butt for everybody's abuse; for Wilkes's devilish mischief; for Churchill's slashing satire; for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a thousand bonfires; that hated him because he was a favourite and a Scotchman, calling ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of them. To the first, I am Allen Thatcher, and this is my father's house. To the second—" He hesitated a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "Well, if you must know,—I was so devilish lonesome!" ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... "Rather. The devilish thing lives along the perpetual snow line; and, for incredible stunts in jumping and climbing, it can give points to any Rocky Mountain goat. You try to get above it, spend the night there, and stalk it when it returns from nocturnal grazing in the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... limp body to the light. "No bones broken so far as I can see," said the voice of Professor Sykes. "Leave him here in the air. He must have got a whiff of their devilish mist in spite of his oxygen; he was flying mighty awkwardly when he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... way man has made himself master of it—has no longer to fear it. And man isn't fit to be altogether master of anything as yet; he's still too much half devil, half ape. There's this damned choked feeling that the world's at loose ends. I don't know how to put it—as if, that is, we, with all the devilish new knowledge we've acquired within the past fifty years, the devilish new machines we've invented, have all at once become stronger than God; taken the final power out of the hands of the authority, whatever it is, toward which we used to look for a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... wait, its body submerged just beneath the swelling undulations of a summer sea, invisible, ruthless, insatiable; only the protrusion of a foot or so of periscopic tube betokened its presence without betraying its purpose. But in that innocent-looking tube lay vast potentialities for evil—nay, devilish certainties of dealing death and destruction. For the little steel-encased arrangement of lenses and mirrors peeping from the depths was the mechanical eye of the submarine and sufficed to betray to watchful Teutons below the approach of the great ship, treasure laden ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... masts, each provided with a fighting top from which stones and jars of Greek fire could be hurled down on the galleys. She also had "two hundred most deadly serpents, prepared for killing Christians." Altogether, she seems to have been about as devilish a craft as even Germans could invent. As she showed no colours Richard hailed her, when she said she was a French ship bound for Acre. But as no one on board could speak French he sent a galley to test her. As soon as the Englishmen ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... 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?" ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... "But it is too true, princess! Oh, listen to me, and close not your ears to the truth. Remember that I am an old man, who has long observed men, and long studied life. I know this Russian diplomacy, and this Russian craft; they have in them something devilish; and these Russian diplomatists, they poison and confound the shrewdest with their deceitful smiles and infernal cunning. Guard yourself, princess, against this Russian diplomacy, and, above ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... 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 of any kind. But the little Dissenter ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... front row. "Well, he! he! that's pretty good; he! he! Devilish pretty girls some of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... are carnal and devilish, and the devil has power over them; yea, even that old serpent that did beguile our first parents, which was the cause of their fall; which was the cause of all mankind becoming carnal, sensual, devilish, knowing evil from good, subjecting ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... see them now, those dear, sweet ladies, just as I sat at their breakfast table twelve years ago, discoursing upon the way of my feet in the world, brushing aside their kindly counsel as a real devilish fellow should, and thrilling them, not alone with my own adventures, but with the adventures of all the other fellows with whom I had rubbed shoulders and exchanged confidences. I appropriated them all, the adventures of the other ...
— The Road • Jack London

... devilish bad one for the houses of Fitzgerald and Carewe. Woman's ambition, coupled with her deceit, is the root of all evil; money is simply an invention of man to protect himself from her encroachments. Eve was ambitious ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... never before realized the man's devilish cunning. His tactics gave him a flying start. Arthur, who had driven straight down the course, had as his objective the high road, which adjoins the waste ground beyond the first green. Once there, he would play ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... long portraits of Saint Werner's worthies on the walls, and on this side and on that—Kennedy knew full well that Brogten's eye had been on him from beginning to end, and that Brogten was enjoying, with devilish malignity, the sense of power which he had gained from the knowledge of another's sin. The thought was intolerable to him, and, finishing his dinner with hasty gulps, he ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... crippled, by their West Indian raids, the ill-gotten resources of the Spaniard, and then crushed his last huge effort in Britain's Salamis, the glorious fight of 1588, what had we been by now but a popish appanage of a world-tyranny as cruel as heathen Rome itself, and far more devilish? ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Italians, Spaniards, and Germans, in order to fish up in the tumult certain districts, to add to the patrimony of St. Peter. They fought like heroes, and fell by thousands into the infernal regions. What happiness would it be for the souls intended for these devilish repasts, if they were thereby to find an end to their torments! But no sooner are they swallowed, digested, and returned piecemeal into the pools of hell than they are regenerated, and arise to become ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... slow work, for all the din and clatter. Forge fires are devilish in the hands of an unskilled blower; rivets break and twist and get chilled when the striking is squint and irregular; iron is tough and stubborn when leverage is misapplied. There were difficulties. (Difficulties ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... pardon me," said his new acquaintance, "if I shut these shutters and the window, for that devilish fever of which I spoke is of such a sort that I must keep the night air even out from my room, or else I shall be shaking the bones out of my joints and chattering the teeth out of my ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... you take me for, Dick? I wasn't born yesterday. A devilish pretty woman, if you ask ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... on the walls or ranged on the table. Of these, although the lads were ignorant of their uses, they entertained no doubt, whatever, that they were the instruments of torture of which they had heard—thumb screws, iron gags, the boot, the rack, and other devilish inventions. They made no reply to the address, and were taken away, this time, down several winding stairs to a black and noxious dungeon, far below the general level of ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... respect for the law was as great as his contempt for the makers of the laws. "Judge MacFarlane had no discretion in the matter. Hawk had a perfect right to file an amended petition, and the judge was obliged to act upon it. I'm not saying it wasn't a devilish sharp trick of Hawk's. It was. He saw a chance to smite them under the fifth ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... going to save Penelope, my boy—somehow. It's a mighty queer world. I don't know but we are all more or less possessed by evil spirits, Chris. What are these brainstorms that overwhelm the best of us? Why do good men and women, on some sudden, devilish impulse, do abominable things, criminal things, that they never meant to do? We doctors pretend to be skeptical, but we all come up against creepy stuff, inside confession stuff that ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... to Westminster by coach; the Cofferer telling us odd stories how he was dealt with by the men of the Church at Westminster in taking a lease of them at the King's coming in, and particularly the devilish covetousness of Dr. Busby. Sir Stephen Fox, in discourse, told him how he is selling some land he hath, which yields him not above three per cent., if so much, and turning it into money, which he can put out ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... own fashion. Goya revived the best traditions of his country's art; he was the last of the great masters and the first of the moderns. Something neurotic, modern, disquieting, threads his work with devilish irregularity. He had not the massive temper of Velasquez, of those men who could paint day after day, year after year, until death knocked at their ateliers. As vigorous as Rubens in his sketches, Goya had not the steady, slow nerves of that master. He was very unequal. His life was as disorderly ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... from his destroyer;—again Jobson levelled his gun at the spot whence the sound issued, when on a sudden, his infernal majesty presented himself in the shape of a huge negro, bloated with fat, and who now lay on the ground, his devilish spirit quelled, and apparently in such an agony of fear, as to be unable to sue for the mercy of the avenging Englishman, who stood laughing over him, at the idea of having so ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... a vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool of Felix Marchand? It did not seem possible, and yet if the man was penniless and an anarchist maybe, there was the possibility. Or—the blood rushed to his face—or it might be that the Gipsy's presence here, this display of devilish antipathy, as though it were all part of the music, was due, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... is concerned, it is now manifest that this was a devilish conspiracy against the people of Lawrence, to cut their throats and burn up the town. How far the men that were with him were conscious partners in his guilt, or how far they were ignorant dupes of a man that had murder in ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... fastening doors and ringing alarm-bells for, as if there were more thieves than honest men in the land? We come to pay you a friendly visit, and, instead of welcome and the wine-skin, you shut the door in our faces. Devilish unfriendly, that, Don Manolito!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... a key to the front door which I had had made without Heinrich's knowledge. I thought by examining the studio I could find out who really went there last night; Heinrich brought me a set of the finger prints, and their startling resemblance to mine convinced me that a plot, devilish in its ingenuity, was being concocted and an attempt made to involve me in their machinations. On my way to the studio I saw Heinrich creeping downstairs and followed him. I never for one moment ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... republican, he barely escapes, and the same with others like him. All educated men were persecuted," he states a month after Thermidor 9;[41141] "to have acquaintances, to be literary, sufficed for arrest, as an aristocrat.... Robespierre... with devilish ingenuity, abused, calumniated and overwhelmed with gall and bitterness all who were devoted to serious studies, all who professed extensive knowledge;... he felt that cultivated men would never bend the knee to him [41142]..... Instruction ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... country also is a very beautiful and proper thing. But if we examine closely much patriotism, that is so called, we shall find it going hand in hand with a good deal that is selfish, and with not a little that is devilish. It was some fine fury of patriotic feeling which enabled the national poet to put into the mouth of every Englishman that horrible prayer with regard to our enemies which we sing when we wish to do honor to our sovereign. It did not seem to him that it might be well to pray that their hearts ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... bent 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 ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... 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

... flank, and at the touch of 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 upon him. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... name, isn't it?—can put a tremor in her voice suddenly. The Trefoil has memories—a fact: something which she doesn't give to the world, generous as she is. It is the shade to her abounding and sparkling passages of light. Only her deep art, I dare say; but devilish pleasant and refreshing when you get tired of laughing—gives a little repose to facial muscles. The Trefoil has decidedly made a sensation. At the races she was as popular as the winner. She must have got home with a chariot full of money. Of course, ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... my eye, for at that moment there was something terrible about it. It was long, thin, and deeply carved; the eyes were large, and gleamed like gold in sunlight; the mouth was small and well shaped, but it wore a devilish and cruel sneer; the forehead lofty, indicating a man of mind, and marked with a slight scar. For the rest the cavalier was dark and southern-looking, his curling hair, like my own, was black, and he ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... JAB WILL spout and WON'T keep to the point; but, all the same, I fancy, somehow, he's getting round the Jury. He's such a jolly innocent kind of old ass, and they like him because he's no end of sport. The plaintiff's a devilish fine girl, and gave her evidence uncommonly well; but, unless WITHERINGTON turns up again, I believe old JAB will romp in a winner, after all! I haven't taken down anything else, except his wind-up, when of course he managed to get ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... intellectual education gave us the don, and material education gave us the cotton-spinner. The emotional and the spiritual in mankind had no outlet. In the unconscious of man there is a God and a Devil, and intellectual activities afford no means of expression to either. And when any godlike or devilish libido can find no outlet it regresses to infantile primitive forms; thus, while the brain of man was concerned with mathematics and logic, the heart of man was seeking primitive things—cruelty, hate, ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... or woman of the white race could have 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 after threw new and varied lights on the affront. Her indignation ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly, and I swelled with arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter and altogether removed from the subvertings of those "Subverters" (for this ill-omened and devilish name was the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived, with a shameless shame that I was not even as they. With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted with their friendship, whose doings I ever did abhor -i.e., their "subvertings," wherewith they wantonly persecuted ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... 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 for him the clergy, the majority of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... his devilish resolve, the assassin gives his horse a prick of the spur, and passes on towards the sumac grove, entering at the same place as before, like a tiger skulking back to the quarry it has killed, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... shot, as were the entire family, for they were all born and brought up on the border, moving farther West as the country became settled. From the father I learned the treachery of the Indians, their mode of warfare and different methods of attack; in fact, I had the devilish traits of the noble red men—as history called ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young

... Letters," III., page 101 (note). Sir Joseph is attacked with quite unnecessary vehemence on another point at page 413.), but the article is directed against Huxley and for Thomson. This review shows me—not that I required being shown—how devilish a clever fellow Huxley is, for the reviewer cannot help admiring his abilities. There are some good specimens of mathematical arrogance in the review, and incidentally he shows how often astronomers have arrived at conclusions which are now seen to be mistaken; so that geologists ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... went on. "I wonder if you take just pride in that body of yours. You are devilish strong. You are a young panther, a lion cub. Well, well, it is you who must ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... creep away from her side. I am here to tell the truth. I began to creep away towards the flask. I did not confess this to myself; but I know now. There was a devilish power in it. I have learned the nature of feelings in a man whom Satan beguiles into selling his soul—the horror of an irresistible and fatal longing for a supreme felicity. And in a drink of water for me, then, there was a greater promise than in universal ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... That devilish corn is getting too tall to plow again, and I've got 'o go through it to-morrow or not ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... Presty, when they called her widow. I know now why my brother, who never deceived me before, has deceived me about this. I understand the part that your daughter has been playing—and I am as certain as if I had heard it, of the devilish lie that one of you—perhaps both of you—must have told my poor child. No, no; I had better not see Catherine. Many a man has killed his wife, and has not had such good reason for doing it as I have. You are quite right to ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... said Mr. —-, as we quitted the house; then, turning to me, he added, with a peculiar smile," That's a devilish smart woman. She would ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... torture wherewith the Three were wont to worm secrets out of the accused—villainous machines for crushing thumbs; the stocks where a prisoner sat immovable while water fell drop by drop upon his head till the torture was more than humanity could bear; and a devilish contrivance of steel, which inclosed a prisoner's head like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means of a screw. It bore the stains of blood that had trickled through its joints long ago, and on one side it had a projection ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Brittany it is but a thing of yesterday, while in the more secluded departments it is very much a thing of to-day. The old folk can recall the time when the farm, the dairy, and the field were ever in peril of the spell, the enchantment, the noxious beam of the evil eye, and tales of many a "devilish cantrip sleight," as Burns happily characterized the activity of the witch and the wizard, were told in hushed voices at the Breton fireside when the winter wind blew cold from the cruel sea and the heaped faggots sent the red glow ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... been retaken by the Chinese. Gen. Tung Fu Shiang has led the Boxers and the goddesses, and has destroyed twenty foreign men-of-war, killing 6,000 foreign soldiers. The seven devilish countries' consuls came to beg for peace. General Tung now has killed all the foreign soldiers. The secondary devils (the native Christians) must die. General Tung has ordered the Boxers to go to the foreign ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... am well again," he returned, "only these bits of plaster make me out worse than I am. As soon as this election is over I'm going to find out who was at the bottom of that devilish plot." ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... wreckers and Chinese thieves are on the alert. Wattai, or some such queer piratical Celestial with devilish propensities, went for the spoil, settling the salvage by arithmetic of his own. The wreck was removed from the skylight, and under the water, in that dense chamber, stagnant with mephitic air, the bruised, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... I'm going to figure out. If I can get her away from Grandoken's, she won't get back, I can tell you that. But that damn cobbler and Theo'll make such a devilish row——" ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... grandfather gave him letters to file and long dreary columns of invoice figures to add. Twice Captain Zelotes went out and then, just as Albert settled back for a rest and breathing spell, Issachar Price appeared, warned apparently by some sort of devilish intuition, and invented "checking up stock" and similar menial and tiresome tasks to keep him uncomfortable till the captain returned. The customers who came in asked questions concerning him and he was introduced to at least a dozen citizens of South Harniss, who observed "Sho!" ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... Cornelius Agrippa, were abhorred as magicians. Pope Gerbert, as Bishop Otho gravely relates, obtained the pontificate by having given himself up entirely to the devil: others suspected him, too, of holding an intercourse with demons; but this was indeed a devilish age! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... pallor, was pulling himself together, and striving to resume the arrogant insolence of his customary bearing. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a husky murmur replaces the harsh stridency of his usual utterance. "What devilish foolery is this—" But ere he can get further, some bucolic statesman brings his massive palm down on the table with a bang that makes the oaken plank crack, and thunders ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... whether the reptile saw him or not he could not tell. For a space he struggled against this unholy fascination; then, overcome by dread, he strove to fly, back to the pool or anywhere out of reach of those devilish orbs. Alas! it was too late: no step could he move backwards, no, not ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... right. That's just it, they're a darn sight too thrilling. They're positively devilish. Now, Lavinia, you have plenty of sense, and I want you to get rid of that thing just as soon as you can. Take it back and ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... was blowing off him the odor of this vulgar incident. "For," said he to himself, "there are some manners so bad that they have a distinct bad smell. He is 'the limit!' The little Severence must be infernally hard-pressed to think of taking him on. Poor child! She's devilish interesting. A really handsome bit, and smart, too —excellent ideas about dress. Yet somehow she's been marooned, overlooked, while far worse have been married well. Strange, that sort of thing. Somewhat my own case. I ought to have been able to get some girl with ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... "And a devilish pretty woman, too. I've seen her frequently. By the way, I stopped in her bedchamber as I came through. But that's neither here or there. What are you doing here with this ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... infernal hypocrite! Oh! the impostor to come to my house in this nefarious manner, and steal the affections of my daughter—the devilish villain! a bastard! a contemptible black-hearted nigger. Oh, my child—my child! it will break your heart when you know what deep disgrace has come upon you. I'll go to him," added he, his face flushed, and his white hair almost erect ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... of it all was the crushing certainty that she had no talents and no chances of success, and that the man had only painted up his fancy picture as a means of deceiving her. Oh, the misery of being a woman! Oh. the cruelty of this great, glorious, devilish London, where a girl, if she was poor and alone, could live only by ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... will protect you if you will only reveal to me the devilish plot which resulted in his ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... sure that the Sisters of Charity are women, my dear Marianne?—In a word, I swear that I asked only one thing, as I lay on that devilish, poisonous dunghill, and that was, to end the matter in the quickest possible way, that I might be no longer thought of, when—don't know why, or, rather, I know very well—in my fever, a certain voice reached me—whence?—from far away it commenced ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... along her narrow, pallid cheeks. Her eyes were strange and drugged, heavy under their heavy, drooping lids. Her thin bosom shrugged convulsively. He stared back at her, devilish and unchanging. With another strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as if she were sick, could feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For with her mind she was unable to attend to his words, he caught ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... every granite coast—where Death the Consoler sets on Gilliatt's head the only crown possible for his impossible feat, and where the dislike of the ignorant peasantry, the brute resistance of machinery and material, the violence of the storm, the devilish ambush of the pieuvre, and all other evils are terminated and evaded and sanctified by the embrace and the euthanasia of the sea. Perhaps it is poetry rather than novel or even romance—in substance it is too abstract and elemental for either ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... let's go drink together, And then I'll go put on my devilish robes— I mean, my Christmas calf-skin suit, And then walk to the woods. O, I'll terrify him, I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... Sir Richard, "who hasn't heard of Buck Vibart—beat Ted Jarraway of Swansea in five rounds—drove coach and four down Whitehall—on sidewalk—ran away with a French marquise while but a boy of twenty, and shot her husband into the bargain. Devilish celebrated figure in 'sporting circles,' ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... Mrs. Colby, "two, if you like. That's all I've got left. Anything to get rid of that devilish bore, Jimmy Brewster. ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... of the Democrat ticket nigh onto forty year, and I never seed the name of old Horace Greeley on a Democrat ticket before; but it's on thar, brethren, and we'll vote it through if it kills us—and it does come devilish near killing ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... yes, to be sure, and a devilish," said Seth, musing. "Men killing one another—and the widows left, an' the orphans, on both sides. War's the plainest evil in all the world; and if I join in it, 'tis to help evil with my eyes open. All my life, sir, I've held by ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... are as good as a straight flush. If you ever come down South, when this cruel war is over, our people will treat you like one of the crowned heads—only a devilish sight better, for the crowned heads rather went back on us. If England had ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... much!" As I had been fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley. No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty minutes. The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby. I gave him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... and leave Nan's home alone. Then you clean up your desk and hand me your resignation. I'm sick—and your damned interference hurts. Sorry; but you must go. Understand? Nan's coming back—understand? Coming back—devilish hot night—for this time of year, isn't it? Man, ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... of hatred by his companion, a new thought flashed suddenly through the satanic mind of the half-breed. It involved an entire change of his plans, but the devilish daring of the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... and a sort of castle was allotted provisionally to us. About forty pupils from the canton at once entered the school, and now we seemed at last to have found what we had so long been seeking. But the priests rose up furiously against us with a really devilish force. We even went in fear of our lives, and were often warned by kind-hearted people to turn back, when we were walking towards secluded spots, or had struck along the outlying paths amongst the mountains. To what abominable means this spirit of bigotry resorted, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... where is demure Mistress Puss? Is she at home keeping vigil with the good dog Tray? No, the house may be in blazes or ransacked by burglars for all she cares. She is out on the tiles and in back gardens pursuing her unholy ritual—that strange ritual that seems so Oriental, so sinister, so full of devilish purpose. I can understand the old association of witchcraft with cats. The sight of cats almost makes me believe in witchcraft, in spite of myself. I can believe anything about a cat. She is heartless ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... 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

... call them rumours—they were devilish close to facts when we left town this morning," Mr. Grisben was saying, with an unexpected incisiveness ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... he is so still," Mr. Thompson said. "To me there is something almost devilish about that ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... Max. The fact is, I found the old fellow had plenty of money, and no one but me to leave it to; so I thought it would be a devilish pity to have it all go to found a hospital, an orthodox college, or some such absurdity, and I could not resist the temptation to become a little saintly, just ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... addressing me in the familiar manner which meant that he was in excellent humor, "there's a lady in Lawson's office. Looks like a devilish fine girl—came on some errand of mercy or justice, no doubt. Have the goodness to conduct her to my quarters. I won't saddle you youngsters with all the business of this division," ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... and was of a durable nature. Aztec literature of this nature existed in considerable quantities at the beginning of the Hispanic occupation. It was thoroughly destroyed by the execrable act of the first Archbishop of Mexico—Zumarraga, who, looking upon these papers as "devilish scrolls," had them collected, piled up, and burnt! Some few, however, escaped, and were preserved and published in Europe. Some famous Maya documents of this nature, from Yucatan, have also brought to light some details of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... amuse me to be strung up and cut down and strung up again. . . . I was facing things—till Lady Poynter shewed the devilish irony to arrange ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... your Habeas Corpus Act, if you think proper, or give him a taste of blue plumb. One thing only I stipulate, that you don't hurt that fat, mutton-headed Broganeer, whatever he may say or do; he's a devilish good fellow. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... cock-a-doodling arrogance that sometimes makes nations in their heyday a laughing-stock for the Gods. Instead we should see one single race, Humanity; poured now into one national mold, now into another; but always with the same duality: half divine, half devilish-idiotic; —and while making the utmost best of each mold as they came to inhabit it, the strong would find it their supreme business to help the weak, and not exploit or contemn them. But it will need the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and, unexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. "I was trying to do him a kindness," he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil. "Thank you for nothing—in his name," I rejoined. "Oh! you are devilish smart," he sneered; "but you are like the rest of them. Too much in the clouds. See what you will do with him." "I don't know that I want to do anything with him." "Don't you?" he spluttered; his grey moustache bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... all about, dense, multitudinous cold, Mixed with the wind's one devilish thrust and shriek Which whiffled out men's tears, deafened, took hold, Flattening the flying drift ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... of a Day" are too modestly named. Our literature cannot forget the masterpieces in this little volume in a day, a year, or an age. The War of Freedom against Slavery has created a devilish enginery of its own: iron for wood, steam for wind and muscle, "Swamp-Angels" and thousand-pounders in place of the armaments that gained the Battle of the Nile and toppled over the chimneys of Copenhagen. New modes of warfare thundered their demand for a new poet to describe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... temple saint, wise in the wisdom of his creed; earthly, sensual, devilish. Look at him till you feel as if you had seen him. Let the photo do its work. It is loathsome—yes, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... 'You may rest assured that that speech was the finest that ever was made in Parliament.' Lord Holland said, 'It is very well of you to say so, but I think your speech last night was a pretty good one.' Fox said, 'And that was a devilish fine ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... young child who has lived according to this commandment, and shall have to confess that with their whole life they are not worthy to give it a drink of water? And it serves them right for their devilish perversion in treading God's commandment under foot that they must vainly torment themselves with works of their own device, and, in addition, have scorn and ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... investigate, and the pilot photographed the phenomenon from the rear. This reproduction of a tenuous mass blown along the discoloured earth will show coming generations how the Boche introduced to the black art of warfare its most devilish form of frightfulness. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... on board—yes. But he is only the tool of others. This devilish conspiracy has been plotted for a long while. There must be a dozen involved in it, one way or another, but, as near as I can learn, the chief devil, the brains of the gang, is the fellow named Hobart. Have ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... from the Greyfriars church-yard, as I have said, and who, being honest men, could not, when put to their oaths, but bear witness to the truth of the matters charged against us. And nothing surely could better show the devilish spirit with which those in authority were at that time actuated, nor the unchristian nature of the prelacy, than that the prisoners should thus have been set free to be made the accusers of their neighbours; and that the curates, men professing to be ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... with the same instinctive readiness and perception. At once the pause which had come in the work of eviction was broken, the plague raged immediately with a fierceness that seemed to have gained more hellish energy and more devilish cruelty from its temporary abatement. The roads were thick with troops of people rushing wildly from their homes and fleeing from their native country as from a land cursed alike by God and by ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... your highness seen into this duke; And, had I first been put to speak my mind, I think I should have told your grace's tale. The duchess by his subornation, Upon my life, began her devilish practices; Or, if he were not privy to those faults, Yet, by reputing of his high descent, As next the king he was successive heir, And such high vaunts of his nobility, Did instigate the bedlam brain-sick duchess By wicked means to frame ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... round the heights, had stumbled upon a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision. ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... was. Hitherto the Snake had had him bound and helpless. As it pursued him in nightmares, his knees had turned to water, great chains had bound his arms, devilish gags had throttled him, he could not breathe, and he had not had a chance to escape nor to fight. He could not even scream for help. He could only cling to a shelf. Now he had a chance. His limbs were free, his eyes ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... my friend. My faith! 'twas on only foolhardiness caused me to grant that devilish prosecutor another sight of my scarlet device. I knew what you maniacs would be after, so I came across in the Daydream,just to see if I couldn't get my share ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Well, well! We know how to stop that!" They were worse than Turks, he declared; they believed neither in God nor in the Communion; they were a set of lazy vagabonds. He would soon pay them out for their devilish craft, and sweep them off the face of the earth. And to this end he summoned the Diet, and, by the consent of all three Estates, issued the famous Edict of St. James {July 25th, 1508.}.22 The decree was sweeping and thorough. The meetings of the Brethren, public and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... dispute In th' heavenly matters of theology; Till swoln with cunning, of [3] a self-conceit, His waxen wings did mount above his reach, And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow; For, falling to a devilish exercise, And glutted now with learning's golden gifts, He surfeits upon [4] cursed necromancy; Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss: And this the man that in his ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... pirate Mannering was a marvel of resource, but as a sea-going buccaneer he is almost a miracle of devilish ingenuity. His exploits are wonderful and plausible, for he avails himself of every modern device and applies recent inventions to the accomplishment of all his pet schemes."—Chicago ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... 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 ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... name. We sell a dozen eggs where we ought to be selling them by the hundred, carting them off in trucks for the London market and congesting the traffic. Harrod's and Whiteley's and the rest of them are beginning to get on their hind legs and talk. That's what they're doing. Devilish unpleasant they're making themselves. You see, laddie, there's no denying it—we did touch them for the deuce of a lot of things on account, and they agreed to take it out in eggs. All they've done so ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... expect just this charming degree of manly frankness from monsieur. A button is a button, too, and a devilish serious thing when, say, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... not tell. Perhaps she, too, can not. If you saw her, O Shakib, you'd do 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, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... said George, sitting up slightly, and increasing the intimacy of his tone, "devilish odd, wasn't it, that the Wheeler woman ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... devilish hard to part with a pal like you, Jack; but all the rest of my life I've got hard things ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... be alongside of us. I could not see it, but instead I saw a lean and clutching black hand lifting itself above the gunwale of the little boat. Surely it was a nightmare! At the same instant a dim but devilish-looking face appeared to rise out of the water, and then came a lurch of the canoe, the quick flash of a knife, and an awful yell from the Wakwafi who was sleeping by my side (the same poor fellow whose odour had been annoying ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... all, Stanninghame, don't be such an old bear!" he burst forth. "A fellow can't help doing things for a devilish ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... don't want you to preach, though I could hear you with a devilish sight better temper than him. There's a hundred things that one's friend don't approve of, but shall he desert him for all that? Leave him to be plucked, and kicked, and abandoned; and, moralizing, with a grin over his fain, say, 'I told you. so!' No! no! Give ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... playing! and playing devilish well, I assure you! All the ladies were capital, and we had no wait or hitch for an instant. You may suppose this, when I tell you that we began at eight, and had the curtain down at eleven. It is their custom here, to prevent heart-burnings in a very heart-burning town, whenever ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster



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



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