Word.ws English Dictionary

the dickens

the dickens adverb: used as an intensifier.

Adverb

  1. Used as an intensifier.
    • Why the dickens did he do that?
    • It is cold as the dickens out here!
    Synonyms:
    the devil

Noun

the dickens

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see the, dickens; (euphemistic) the devil.
    • She can go to the dickens for what she said.
    • “Four weeks ago, I was sitting down for breakfast with my beautiful wife, Evie. Evie and I were sitting down with our two beautiful little boys, Connor and C-C-- Cah-- ristopher, and Christopher looks up to me-- he's six years old and full of the dickens--”2023 July 27, Max Brockman & Shana Gohd, “The Campaign” (8:49 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 5, episode 4, spoken by Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch)

Examples of the dickens in a sentence

  • I cannot tell what (the dickens) his name is my husband had him of, what do you cal your Knights name ſirrah?c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […]...
  • “[…] You’ll come in sight of the Martians I expect about half a mile along this road.” / “What the dickens are they like?” asked the lieutenant.1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton”, in “The War of the Worlds”, in Pearson’s...
  • "That's it," I exclaimed, "--that's just the taste exactly, though I haven't experienced it since boyhood; but how can water from a flowing stream, taste thus, and what the dickens makes it so warm?1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter IV, in The Land That Time Forgot:
  • “Who in the dickens are you?” the lanky man said. / “I am a genie,” the creature said.1992 November 4, Mike Royko, “Bush’s wish isn’t voters’ command”, in Chicago Tribune, 146th year, number 309, Chicago, Ill., →ISSN, →OCLC...

Synonyms of the dickens

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Origin of the dickens

See dickens.

Words formed from the dickens

Questions about the dickens

What does the dickens mean?
The dickens means used as an intensifier.
How do you use the dickens in a sentence?
I cannot tell what (the dickens) his name is my husband had him of, what do you cal your Knights name ſirrah?
What part of speech is the dickens?
The dickens can be an adverb or a noun.

Words near the dickens in the dictionary

  1. the devil you know
  2. the devil you know is better than the devil you don't
  3. the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know
  4. the devil you say
  5. The Devils Wilderness
  6. the dickens
  7. the dickens out of
  8. the dickens you say
  9. the die is cast
  10. The Ditch
  11. the dog ate my homework

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: the dickens (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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Cite this entry: “the dickens.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/the_dickens. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.