DIABOLICAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does diabolical mean? 

• DIABOLICAL (adjective)
  The adjective DIABOLICAL has 2 senses:

1. showing the cunning or ingenuity or wickedness typical of a devil

2. extremely evil or cruel; expressive of cruelty or befitting hell

  Familiarity information: DIABOLICAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DIABOLICAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing the cunning or ingenuity or wickedness typical of a devil

Synonyms:

devilish; diabolic; diabolical; mephistophelean; mephistophelian

Context example:

a mephistophelian glint in his eye

Similar:

evil (morally bad or wrong)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Extremely evil or cruel; expressive of cruelty or befitting hell

Synonyms:

demonic; diabolic; diabolical; fiendish; hellish; infernal; satanic; unholy

Context example:

unholy grimaces

Similar:

evil (morally bad or wrong)

 Context examples 

He smiled, such a soft, smooth, diabolical smile that I knew there was some trick behind his smoothness.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It seemed as though his features had frozen into a diabolical grin at the world he had left and outwitted.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

There is the evidence of two frightened women that it perched upon the roof of the Queen's Hall and remained there like a diabolical statue for some hours.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I take it, in the first place, that neither of us is prepared to admit diabolical intrusions into the affairs of men. Let us begin by ruling that entirely out of our minds.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I do not know, said he, after a pause of expectation on her side, and thoughtfulness on his own,—how YOU may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)