undevil

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ devil.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʌnˈdɛvɪl/

Verb

undevil (third-person singular simple present undevils, present participle undeviling or undevilling, simple past and past participle undeviled or undevilled)

1. (archaic, transitive) To free from possession by a devil or evil spirit; to exorcise or to make less devilish.
   • 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI):

     The boy having gotten a habit of counterfeiting […] would not be undevilled by all their exorcisms.

   • 1841, Mrs. Gore (Catherine Grace Frances), Cecil:

     [...] for the following day, the flowers were watered a quarter of an hour earlier than usual, and the bulfinch was allowed to perch on her finger and chirruped to, with a degree of innocent tenderness that would have undeviled Mephistophiles.

   • 1893, Thomas De Witt Talmage, From Manger to Throne:

     It is hardly more wondrous to undevil a man than it is to restore reason, at a word, to the brain-distracted, the ravening, frenzied bedlamite — the re-enthronement of a mind lost in the darkness of shattered intellect.

Derived terms

• undevilled

References

• “undevil”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• unlived