EVIL SPIRIT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does evil spirit mean? 

• EVIL SPIRIT (noun)
  The noun EVIL SPIRIT has 1 sense:

1. a spirit tending to cause harm

  Familiarity information: EVIL SPIRIT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EVIL SPIRIT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A spirit tending to cause harm

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("evil spirit" is a kind of...):

disembodied spirit; spirit (any incorporeal supernatural being that can become visible (or audible) to human beings)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "evil spirit"):

bad fairy (a fairy that tends to cause harm)

bogey; bogie; bogy (an evil spirit)

daemon; daimon; demon; devil; fiend (an evil supernatural being)

cacodaemon; cacodemon (an evil spirit)

ghoul (an evil spirit or ghost)

goblin; hob; hobgoblin ((folklore) a small grotesque supernatural creature that makes trouble for human beings)

kelpie; kelpy ((Scottish folklore) water spirit in the form of a horse that likes to drown its riders)

lamia; vampire ((folklore) a corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living)

Instance hyponyms:

Mephistopheles (evil spirit to whom Faust sold his soul)

 Context examples 

If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Once already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The little boy now came in, and the evil spirit in the wife made her say kindly to him, “My son, will you have an apple?” but she gave him a wicked look.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

It is well we have no sceptic here, or he would say that you were working some spell to keep out an evil spirit.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet behind.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

'Ha! Ha!' laughed the ghost, and having peeped through the keyhole at the princesses spinning away for dear life, the evil spirit picked up her victim and put him in a large tin box, where there were eleven other knights packed together without their heads, like sardines, who all rose and began to...

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

And as he bent over to do so, the evil spirit urged her, and crash! down went the lid, and off went the little boy’s head.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Just then she looked out of the window and saw him coming, and it seemed as if an evil spirit entered into her, for she snatched the apple out of her little daughter’s hand, and said, You shall not have one before your brother.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)