pandemoniac

comparative more pandemoniac · superlative most pandemoniac

1. Relating to, resembling, or characteristic of, a pandemonium.

   I was taken out of my bed, overpowered with the unnatural heavy sleep, as usual, when the necromancer chooses to give me a pandemoniac lodging, to please his own demoniac fancy.

   1821, Thomas Henry Marshal, “The Exile restored”, in The Irish Necromancer; or, Deer Park. A Novel., volume I, London: […] A. K. Newman and Co., […], page 45

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   We believe, too, that this most ungodly garment was actually black; and there its wearer stood, perking his pandemoniac stock in the face of the pious door-keeper, like Satan at the gates of heaven!

   1825 December, “An Essay on a Common-Place Topic”, in The Oriental Herald, volume VII, number 24, London, page 478

   In this time of horror the pandemoniac legislature issued decree after decree with terrific rapidity for the destruction of entire towns, the waste of large districts, and the indiscriminate massacre of their inhabitants, of both sexes and all ages; and the decrees were executed to their utmost possible extent.

   1838, Henry William Lovett, “The Fifth Trumpet and the Fifth Vial, the First Stage of the French Revolution”, in The Revelation of Saint John Explained, 2nd edition, London: Whittaker & Co., […], page 245

plural pandemoniacs

1. One who delights in pandemonium and often causes it.

   […]and in his two hands were two wind instruments, which he used alternately for the production of sounds delicious to boys and pandemoniacs.

   1872 June 29, “Bar One”, in Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading, volume I, number 26, Boston, Mass.: James R. Osgood and Company, page 722, column 1

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   […]and never did a conclave of popish pandemoniacs with their own Vulcan seated as and for their president, confronted by his deputy with hammer, tongs, and poker, for his triple trident, meet at any time (except to concoct and perpetrate a deed of blood, more or less direct) to determine upon an affair of more deep and dark importance, than that of the aforesaid junta of “old wives.”

   1838, James (the Elder;) Humphrys, The Pioneers in Contrast. A Disquisition Descriptive Throughout of the Truly Simoniacal Use and Anti-Christian Abuse of Water, as at this Day Employed in the Matter of Baptism, Together with a Dialogue and Address: Being Absolutely Conclusive as to the Schismatical Character of the National System, Etc., London: […] E. Palmer and Son, […], pages 96–97

   The fiend is no longer a pandemoniac—never safe unless loaded with chains and guarded by ponderous doors; but simply a harmless, eccentric creature whose permanent, or even temporary, turn of mind makes him, in a measure, ridiculous to that great world whose infinitesimal units, are, of course, entirely sane.

   1896 April, P.B. Peabody, “The Photo Fiend”, in The Nidologist, volume 3, number 8, page 85

   Here, all down the coast, untimely ripped from bed, somnambulist mothers sterilize rubber nipples; tots are potted, junior pandemoniacs are urged to their nice quiet toys; fathers wish they weren't; and house-guests, having checked the child-proof bolts on doors, duck their heads under pillows.

   1961, John Reeves, A Beach of Strangers: An Excursion, page 35

   It is my intention to summon forth all manner of banshee, bugaboo and bogybeast. To raise divers demons, dibbuks, ghouls and gorgons. To conjure pigwidgeons and pandemoniacs from those regions which are forever night.

   1994, Robert Rankin, Raiders of the Lost Car Park, page 43

2. Something that is characterized by pandemonium.

   My spirit then sending signals through these partial diameters, through dangers magically implied by powers which roam the pandemoniacs of the Oort dimension.

   2011, Will Alexander, Diary as Sin, page 156

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   The question is, therefore, whether we are to practise and to endure bad manners, and thereby to revert, as we must in that case, to the state of nature and the uses of pandemoniacs; or whether it would be not best and wisest for each of us both to pay to and to claim from all, those manifestations of mutual respect in which Good Manners consist.

   1875 June 5, R., “Our Manners”, in Vanity Fair, London, page 311, column 1

   Well sah! wid dat he rushed for Brudder Cain, An' eberry brudder grabbed a brudder, and it is wid pain, I chronikle de windin' up of what started berry cibil; Sich a pandemoniac ez would shame de berry debil;

   1882 April, J.A. Doyle, “De Bredden on Dancin'”, in The Elocutionist's Journal, number 43, page 3