Word.ws English Dictionary

giving the devil his due

giving the devil his due is the present participle of give the devil his due.

Meaning of give the devil his due

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...

Questions about giving the devil his due

What is giving the devil his due the present participle of?
Giving the devil his due is the present participle of give the devil his due.

Words near giving the devil his due in the dictionary

  1. giving something up as a bad job
  2. giving suck
  3. giving the ax
  4. giving the axe
  5. giving the bird
  6. giving the devil his due
  7. giving the dirts
  8. giving the elbow
  9. giving the finger
  10. giving the floor
  11. giving the game away

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: giving the devil his due (page history and authors); 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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