destroying angel

Noun

destroying angel (plural destroying angels)

1. Any of a group of four deadly toxic mushrooms in the Amanita genus: Amanita bisporigera, Amanita ocreata, Amanita verna, and Amanita virosa.
   • The doctors ran some tests and confirmed I'd eaten the destroying angel. I was the third person that year to be admitted after eating one. The two before me hadn't survived.2010 November 13, Richard Eshelman, Sophie Haydock, “Experience: I nearly died after eating wild mushrooms”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
   • You might survive if you eat a destroying angel or death cap, but you’ll probably need a liver transplant.2015 November 6, Helen Macdonald, “Sex, Death and Mushrooms”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms:

   angel of death, death angel

2. In the Hebrew Bible, an entity sent out by God on several occasions to punish opponents.
   • Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in Heaven can be destroying angels.1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 4, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC
   • It was terrible, indeed; but so was death, the universal law. And even if the talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries.1885, Robert Louis Stevenson, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, “Story of the Destroying Angel”, in More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 23