devil-ridden

English

Etymology

From devil +‎ ridden.

Adjective

devil-ridden (comparative more devil-ridden, superlative most devil-ridden)

1. Plagued or dominated by the devil or devils.
   • 1692 (indicated as 1693), Cotton Mather, “Enchantments Encountred”, in The Wonders of the Invisible World. Observations as well Historical as Theological, upon the Nature, the Number, and the Operations of the Devils. […], Boston, Mass.: […] Benjamin Harris, →OCLC:

     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?

   • 1910 December, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”, in His Last Bow: A Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published October 1917, →OCLC, page 260:

     "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!"

   • 1913, James Hope Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism‎^[1], London: Williams & Norgate, Lecture 4, p. 128:

     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.

2. Possessed by a devil or devils.
   • 1896, Alexander Maclaren, chapter 7, in The Beatitudes and Other Sermons‎^[2], London: Alexander & Shepheard, page 67:

     […] he plunges into the struggles of the multitude below, and frees the devil-ridden boy from the demon that possessed him.

   • 1917, Tom Kettle, “‘Zur Erinnerung’: A Letter to an Austrian Fellow-Student”, in The Ways of War‎^[3], New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 167:

     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?

   • 1948, William Thomas Walsh, New York: Macmillan, Chapter 12, p. 100,^[4]

     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.

3. (figurative) Suffering from mental anguish.
   • 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,^[5]

     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 […]

   • 1920, Ruth Holt Boucicault, chapter 17, in The Rose of Jericho‎^[6], New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, page 258:

     He was so gifted, so lovable, but so great an extremist, they said; he overdrove himself always one way or another; and when he married the wrong woman, the mistake tortured him more than it might have done other men. “He’s devil-ridden with that temperament of his,” Bricksham said once to his wife.

   • 1938, R. Thurston Hopkins, “The Tower of the Forty Companions” in Ghosts and Goblins, London: The World’s Work,[1938], p. 88,^[7]

     This, of course, was merely the semi-delirious notions of a man devil ridden by fever and nerves […]

   • 1952, Herman Lewis, A Practical Manual of Screen Playwriting‎^[8], Cleveland: Forum, published 1963, Section 3, p. 184:

     In the picture Return of Rusty […] the little refugee boy, Loddy, is still devil-ridden with his memories of the war.

4. (figurative) Wild, crazed.
   • 1858, Thomas Carlyle, chapter I, in History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC:

     […] Grandmaster Werner […] had lain down in Marienburg one afternoon of this year 1330, to take his siesta, and was dreaming peaceably after a moderate repast, when a certain devil-ridden mortal, Johann von Endorf, one of his Ritters, long grumbling about severity, want of promotion and the like, rushed in upon the good old man; ran him through, dead for a ducat […]

   • 1925, Barrett Willoughby, chapter 6, in Rocking Moon‎^[9], New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons:

     Ten minutes later in his room under the eaves his last thoughts were of the young trader at the wheel of the Seal Pup driving his craft recklessly through the night waters, his devil-ridden eyes fixed on—what?

   • 2017 January 23, Richard Kurt, “Terrace Talk: Man United — We’re worse finishers than Hillary Clinton”, in Irish Examiner:

     I belong to what I suspect is the majority: those who don’t give a monkeys about goal and appearance records anyway. […] They are just a form of player stats, after all, and we all know what right-minded football fans think of that devil-ridden number-crunchery.