archfiend

1. capitalizedoftenSatan.

   So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay Chain’d on the burning Lake,

   1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 209-210

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   In disobedience to his God, Did man himself call down the rod? Or did th’ arch-fiend, from Heav’n that fell, Inspire the mischief to rebel?

   1759, William Kenrick, Epistles Philosophical and Moral, London: T. Wilcox, Epistle 6, page 210

   All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathised with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.

   1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter 8, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume II, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 121

   And then the subject became Religion, which was the Arch-fiend’s deadliest weapon. Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind […]

   1905 April–October, Upton Sinclair, chapter XXXI, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 26 February 1906, →OCLC, page 397

   These, it was believed, would prevent the Arch-fiend from entering the charmed ring and wreaking vengeance upon the sorcerers.

   1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 116

   Synonyms: Lucifer

plural archfiends

1. A chief fiend (devil, demon or monster).

   Seven chief demons, seven archfiends, aid Ahriman in his struggle against the forces of light.

   1977, Jeffrey Burton Russell, chapter 3, in The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity,, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, page 115

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   Of those [spirits] who rebelled some became devils, fiends or archfiends, according to the manifold proportions of their transgression.

   1886, Charles Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, Lecture 6, p. 197

   […] he thought for a minute with a freezing detached almost amused calm of the dreadful night inevitably awaiting him whether he drank much more or not, his room shaking with daemonic orchestras […] the vicious shouting, the strumming, the slamming, the pounding, the battling with insolent archfiends, the avalanche breaking down the door, the proddings from under the bed, and always, outside, the cries, the wailing, the terrible music, the dark’s spinets:

   1947, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 342

   Synonyms: archdemon, archdevil

2. transferred senseA diabolically evil person.

   1690, anonymous translator, The Royal Wanton (attributed to Gregorio Leti), London: F.B., Part 5, p. 48, […] her Arch-fiend and Devil of a Lord, had impudently sent the same Villain to abuse her once again.

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   So this is a plot to shield this arch-fiend, and I have detected it. A word from me, and three heads besides his would roll from their shoulders!

   1888, W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, composer, “Act 2”, in The Yeomen of the Guard […] , London: Chappel & Co., […], published c. 1911

   Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang’s spirit, but as yet there were not signs of his succeeding.

   1906 May–October, Jack London, chapter 3, in White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC, part 4 (The Superior Gods), pages 218–219

   […] in every hamlet of the United States where motion pictures were shown, bug-eyed filmgoers stared in horror at the celluloid villanies of the Huns, led by that archfiend Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Beast of Berlin.

   1970, Irving Werstein, Shattered Decade: 1919-1929, New York: Scribner, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 17