FIEND

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does fiend mean? 

• FIEND (noun)
  The noun FIEND has 3 senses:

1. a cruel wicked and inhuman person

2. an evil supernatural being

3. a person motivated by irrational enthusiasm (as for a cause)

  Familiarity information: FIEND used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FIEND (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A cruel wicked and inhuman person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

demon; devil; fiend; monster; ogre

Hypernyms ("fiend" is a kind of...):

disagreeable person; unpleasant person (a person who is not pleasant or agreeable)

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

demoniac (someone who acts as if possessed by a demon)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An evil supernatural being

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

daemon; daimon; demon; devil; fiend

Hypernyms ("fiend" is a kind of...):

evil spirit (a spirit tending to cause harm)

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

incubus (a male demon believed to lie on sleeping persons and to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women)

succuba; succubus (a female demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping men)

dibbuk; dybbuk ((Jewish folklore) a demon that enters the body of a living person and controls that body's behavior)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A person motivated by irrational enthusiasm (as for a cause)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

fanatic; fiend

Context example:

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject

Hypernyms ("fiend" is a kind of...):

enthusiast; partisan; partizan (an ardent and enthusiastic supporter of some person or activity)

 Context examples 

Cheese-Face had been a little fiend at fighting, and had never once shown mercy to him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“I will soon seize you,” said the fiend.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Yet at the idea that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance returned, and like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime?

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I have held my own in many a struggle, but the man had a grip of iron and the fury of a fiend.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This fiend has several imprudent letters—imprudent, Watson, nothing worse—which were written to an impecunious young squire in the country.

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

There, such as were not as spotless as an angel might have the dispositions of a fiend.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Come, Nigel, lest the foul fiend get the better of me again.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her away from the house.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there were no signs of his succeeding.

(White Fang, by Jack London)