What does devil-ridden mean?
Devil-ridden means Plagued or dominated by the devil or devils..
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Pronunciation varies by accent · adjective
Plagued or dominated by the devil or devils..
To VVrangle the Devil, out of the Country, vvill be truly a Nevv Experiment! Alas, vve are not Avvare of the Devil, if vve do not think, that he aims at Enflaming us one againſt another; & ſhall vve ſuffer our ſelves to be Devil-Ridden? or, by any Vnadviſableneſs, contribute unto the VVidening of our Breaches?
"We are devil-ridden, Mr. Holmes! My poor parish is devil-ridden!" he cried. "Satan himself is loose in it! We are given over into his hands!"
The faithful Zoroastrian has never had anything to do with Ahriman but to fight him and destroy his creation. It was a veritable emancipation for devil-ridden souls, ever cringing with fear before powers of darkness possessing vague but intensely real capacity for mischief.
1948, William Thomas Walsh, New York: Macmillan, Chapter 12, p. 100, He exorcised the fierce demoniac in the land of the Gerasens, whom no man had been able to tame or even to keep chained among the tombs; and Peter saw the fearful spectacle of the thousand devil-ridden swine thundering down a rocky declivity to perish in the churning waters, like damned souls plunging into hell.
[…] he plunges into the struggles of the multitude below, and frees the devil-ridden boy from the demon that possessed him.
I look across the long grass, lush with disintegrating corpses, and imagine that Prussia may have laid hold of you for other pursuits than philology. Perhaps it is you whose machine-gun taps every night like a devil-ridden typewriter against this particular area of our parapet?
1878, William Morris, letter cited in John William Mackail, The Life of William Morris, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899, Volume I, Chapter 11, p. 370, I am still plaguy lame, a very limpet, but not so devil-ridden as I was. I think that came of that infernal furnace-heat we were in, the last few days of Italy […]
1938, R. Thurston Hopkins, “The Tower of the Forty Companions” in Ghosts and Goblins, London: The World’s Work,[1938], p. 88, This, of course, was merely the semi-delirious notions of a man devil ridden by fever and nerves […]
Use devil-ridden when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Devil-ridden means Plagued or dominated by the devil or devils..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
To VVrangle the Devil, out of the Country, vvill be truly a Nevv Experiment! Alas, vve are not Avvare of the Devil, if vve do not think, that he aims at Enflaming us one againſt another; & ſhall vve ſuffer our ſelves to be Devil-Ridden? or, by any Vnadviſableneſs, contribute unto the VVidening of our Breaches?
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