Word.ws English Dictionary

give the devil his due

give the devil his due verb: to acknowledge the positive qualities of a person who is unpleasant or disliked.

Verb

give the devil his due (third-person singular simple present gives the devil his due, present participle giving the devil his due, simple past gave the devil his due, past participle given the devil his due)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To acknowledge the positive qualities of a person who is unpleasant or disliked.
    • […]for he was never yet a breaker of
      proverbs: he will give the devil his due.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    • Yet give the devil his due; Says grace before he doth a deed of villainy.1821, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 4, in Kenilworth

Examples of give the devil his due in a sentence

  • And to give the devil his due he's finer than ever.1922, Zane Grey, chapter 5, in The Day of the Beast:
  • We are obliged, at least this once, to give the devil his due — and to consider the possibility that he may even be, in this instance, the angel of bleak truthfulness.2007 April 5, Richard Schickel, "The Fog of War Resistance" (film review), Time

Forms of give the devil his due

third-person singular presentgives the devil his due
present participlegiving the devil his due
pastgave the devil his due
past participlegiven the devil his due

Questions about give the devil his due

What does give the devil his due mean?
Give the devil his due means to acknowledge the positive qualities of a person who is unpleasant or disliked.
How do you use give the devil his due in a sentence?
And to give the devil his due he's finer than ever.
What part of speech is give the devil his due?
Give the devil his due is a verb.
What is the past tense of give the devil his due?
The past tense of give the devil his due is gave the devil his due.

Words near give the devil his due in the dictionary

  1. give stick
  2. give suck
  3. give the ax
  4. give the axe
  5. give the bird
  6. give the devil his due
  7. give the dirts
  8. give the elbow
  9. give the finger
  10. give the fingers
  11. give the floor

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give the devil his due (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-give the devil his due.ogg.

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