devil-ridden

Adjective

devil-ridden (comparative more devil-ridden, superlative most devil-ridden)

1. Plagued or dominated by the devil or devils.
   • To VVrangle the Devil, out of the Country, vvill be truly a Nevv Experiment! Alas, vve are not Avvare of the Devil, if vve do not think, that he aims at Enflaming us one againſt another; & ſhall vve ſuffer our ſelves to be Devil-Ridden? or, by any Vnadviſableneſs, contribute unto the VVidening of...1692 (indicated as 1693), Cotton Mather, “Enchantments Encountred”, in The Wonders of the Invisible World. Observations as well Historical as Theological, upon the Nature, the Number, and the...
   • "We are devil-ridden, Mr. Holmes! My poor parish is devil-ridden!" he cried. "Satan himself is loose in it! We are given over into his hands!"1910 December, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”, in His Last Bow: A Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company...
2. Possessed by a devil or devils.
   • […] he plunges into the struggles of the multitude below, and frees the devil-ridden boy from the demon that possessed him.1896, Alexander Maclaren, chapter 7, in The Beatitudes and Other Sermons, London: Alexander & Shepheard, page 67
   • I look across the long grass, lush with disintegrating corpses, and imagine that Prussia may have laid hold of you for other pursuits than philology. Perhaps it is you whose machine-gun taps every night like a devil-ridden typewriter against this particular area of our parapet?1917, Tom Kettle, “‘Zur Erinnerung’: A Letter to an Austrian Fellow-Student”, in The Ways of War, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 167
3. (figuratively) Suffering from mental anguish.
   • I am still plaguy lame, a very limpet, but not so devil-ridden as I was. I think that came of that infernal furnace-heat we were in, the last few days of Italy […]1878, William Morris, letter cited in John William Mackail, The Life of William Morris, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899, Volume I, Chapter 11, p. 370
   • He was so gifted, so lovable, but so great an extremist, they said; he overdrove himself always one way or another; and when he married the wrong woman, the mistake tortured him more than it might have done other men. “He’s devil-ridden with that temperament of his,” Bricksham said once to his wife.1920, Ruth Holt Boucicault, chapter 17, in The Rose of Jericho, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, page 258
4. (figuratively) Wild, crazed.
   • […] Grandmaster Werner […] had lain down in Marienburg one afternoon of this year 1330, to take his siesta, and was dreaming peaceably after a moderate repast, when a certain devil-ridden mortal, Johann von Endorf, one of his Ritters, long grumbling about severity, want of promotion and the like...1858, Thomas Carlyle, chapter I, in History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC
   • Ten minutes later in his room under the eaves his last thoughts were of the young trader at the wheel of the Seal Pup driving his craft recklessly through the night waters, his devil-ridden eyes fixed on—what?1925, Barrett Willoughby, chapter 6, in Rocking Moon, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons