devil-ridden

English

Etymology

devil +‎ ridden

Adjective

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

1. Plagued or dominated by the devil or devils.
   • 1693, Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World, “Enchantments Encounter’d” in Samuel G. Drake (editor), The Witchcraft Delusion in New England, Roxbury, Mass.: W. Elliot Woodward, 1866, Volume I, p. 33,^[1]

     To wrangle the Devil out of the Country, will be truly a New Experiment: Alas! we are not aware of the Devil, if we do not think, that he aims at inflaming us one against another; and shall we suffer our selves to be Devil-ridden? or by any unadvisableness contribute unto the Widening of our Breaches?

   • 1910, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” in His Last Bow, New York: George H. Doran, 1917, p. 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, London: Williams & Norgate, Lecture 4, p. 128,^[2]

     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, The Beatitudes and Other Sermons, London: Alexander & Shepheard, Chapter 7, p. 67,^[3]

     […] 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, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 167,^[4]

     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,^[5]

     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,^[6]

     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, The Rose of Jericho, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Chapter 17, p. 258,^[7]

     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,^[8]

     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, Cleveland: Forum, 1963, Section 3, p. 184,^[9]

     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, History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Leipzich: Tauchnitz, Volume I, Book II, Chapter 1, p. 185,^[10]

     […] 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, Rocking Moon, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Chapter 6,^[11]

     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, Richard Kurt, “Terrace Talk: Man United — We’re worse finishers than Hillary Clinton,” Irish Examiner, 23 January, 2017,^[12]

     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.