devil [OE] The English word devil goes back to Greek diabolos ‘accuser, slanderer’, the source also of diabolic [LME], and similar words. In the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible written in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc, diabolos translated the Hebrew word for ‘Satan’. The devil permeates popular wisdom. Versions of the devil finds work for idle hands appear from Middle English but go back to the letters of St Jerome (c.342–420). Why should the devil have all the best tunes? is a question that has been attributed to the Victorian evangelist Rowland Hill, who encouraged the singing of hymns to popular melodies, but actually appears in the late 18th century. The words speak or talk of the devil are often uttered when a person appears just after being mentioned. The expression dates back to the mid 17th century and comes from the superstition that if you speak the devil’s name aloud he will suddenly appear.

The expression the devil to pay, ‘serious trouble to be expected’, is often said to have a nautical origin. The seam near a ship’s keel was sometimes known as ‘the devil’, and because of its position was very difficult to ‘pay’, or seal with pitch or tar. There is not much evidence for this theory, though, and it is more probable that the phrase was a reference to a pact made with Satan, like that of Faust’s, and to the inevitable payment to be made to him in the end. Shakespeare used the proverb needs must when the Devil drives, ‘sometimes you have to do something that you would rather not’, in All’s Well that Ends Well, but he did not invent it: it is first found in a medieval work called The Assembly of the Gods. Needs must here means ‘one needs must’, or in today’s language ‘one must’ or ‘you must’. To play devil’s advocate [E17th] is ‘to express an opinion that you do not really hold in order to encourage debate’. The devil’s advocate was an official appointed by the Roman Catholic Church to challenge a proposal to make a dead person into a saint. His job was to present everything known about the proposed saint, including any negative aspects, in order to make sure the case was examined from all sides. The position was first established by Pope Sixtus V in 1587. It still exists, but the official is now known as the Promoter of the Faith. See also angel, demon, deuce, every, fall.