the devil a one
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English[edit]
Pronoun[edit]
- (now regional, dated, idiomatic, slang) Not a single one, none (of a number of people or things).
- 1653, Thomas Urquhart, transl., The First Book of the Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais[1], London: Richard Baddeley, Book 2, Chapter 26, p. 168-169:
- making great chear with a good deal of vineger, the devil a one of them did forbear from his victuals, it was a triumphant and incomparable spectacle to see how they ravened and devoured.
- 1709, Susanna Centlivre, The Man’s Bewitch’d[2], London: Bernard Lintott, act V, page 66:
- […] she wou’d have corrupted all their Wives; the Devil a one wou’d have made her own Butter, after being acquainted with her.
- 1790, John O’Keeffe, The Highland Reel[3], Dublin, act 2, page 34:
- (He helps them on with the clothes.) There, the devil a one of them can know you now— […] you’re so nicely disguised,
- 1912, George A. Birmingham, Priscilla’s Spies, New York: Hodder and Stoughton, G.H. Doran, Chapter 14, pp. 183-184,[5]
- Jimmy says it’s hard to tell what she’d be after. He did think at the first go off that it might be cockles; but it’s not, for he took her to Carribee strand, where there’s plenty of them, and the devil a one she’d pick up.
- (now regional, dated, idiomatic, slang) Not; with a singular pronoun, negates the clause.
- The devil a one of me will ever set foot there.
- 1916, Seumas O’Brien, “The Lady of the Moon”, in The Whale and the Grasshopper and other Fables,[6], Boston: Little, Brown, page 164:
- […] I met just as strange a man, and he sitting on his hat on the banks of the Fairy Lake of Lisnavarna, watching the moon’s reflection in the clear waters, and the devil a one of him knew that he was contrary at all.