bedevil
Americanverb (used with object)
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bedevils,
present (3rd person singular)
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bedeviled,
past participle, past
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bedevilled,
past participle, past (especially British)
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bedeviling,
present participle
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bedevilling
present participle (especially British)
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to torment or harass maliciously or diabolically, as with doubts, distractions, or worries.
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to possess, as with a devil; bewitch.
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to cause confusion or doubt in; muddle; confound.
an issue bedeviled by prejudices.
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to beset or hamper continuously.
a new building bedeviled by elevator failures.
verb
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to harass or torment
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to throw into confusion
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to possess, as with a devil
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bedevilsimple
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bedevilssimple
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have bedeviledperfect
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have bedevilledperfect
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has bedeviledperfect
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has bedevilledperfect
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am bedevilingprogressive
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am bedevillingprogressive
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are bedevilingprogressive
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are bedevillingprogressive
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is bedevilingprogressive
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is bedevillingprogressive
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have been bedevilingperfect progressive
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have been bedevillingperfect progressive
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has been bedevilingperfect progressive
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has been bedevillingperfect progressive
Past
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bedeviledsimple
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bedevilledsimple
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had bedeviledperfect
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had bedevilledperfect
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was bedevilingprogressive
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was bedevillingprogressive
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were bedevilingprogressive
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were bedevillingprogressive
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had been bedevilingperfect progressive
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had been bedevillingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bedevil
Explanation
To bedevil is to "be" a bit like a "devil." To bedevil means to cause trouble, or, when talking about a person, to torment or harass. Bedevil has nothing to do with the eggs you eat on a picnic. Those are just plain deviled. And although, in the 1570s, bedeviled could be taken to mean literally "possessed," the word no longer involves an actual devil, either. It just applies to people or things that make trouble like a devil would want to do.
Vocabulary lists containing bedevil
This Week in Words: August 21 - 25, 2017
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The Midwife's Apprentice
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This Week In Culture: September 28–October 4, 2019
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The homeless tent encampments that block sidewalks and bedevil retail businesses have shrunk, while foot traffic and transit ridership have risen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2025
"The systemic frictions that bedevil the US-China trade relationship will not be solved any time soon," Mr Olson adds.
From BBC ● May 9, 2025
Such are the occasional aggravations and annoyances that bedevil the tony section of Los Angeles that Harris calls home.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2024
Diseases like Alzheimer's, strokes and other cognitive impairments continue to bedevil doctors seeking a cure.
From Salon ● Apr. 4, 2024
I continued to bedevil the Law Society and registrar with demands, which they continued to deflect.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
Their complexity bedevils the computer models that simulate how the climate could evolve.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026
It is a problem that Sullivan admits bedevils him to this day, although he also notes that CPAPs have evolved over the years to become much more comfortable than during his 1980 experiment.
From Salon ● Oct. 23, 2023
Superconductor-based computing systems, where electrical resistance in the switches and wires falls to zero, might solve the cooling challenge that increasingly bedevils the world’s data centers.
From New York Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
To tackle such “lawful but awful” content that frequently bedevils content moderators, the EU will require extra scrutiny for the biggest online platforms - those with 45 million monthly users.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 15, 2022
I don’t claim that Powell had it all figured out: American history bedevils the most earnest attempts to make sense of it.
From "The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates" by Wes Moore
Hand him a first-class ticket to any conflict zone on Earth and his diplomatic temperament would ease tensions that have long bedeviled U.N. envoys.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 7, 2026
Russia seized the islands from Japan in the dying days of World War II and a dispute over their sovereignty has bedeviled relations between Moscow and Tokyo ever since.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
When Paul and Gaz confront Dee, Taylor’s response is so cowardly that it’s pathetic, suggesting a spinelessness that bedeviled him long before he wound up in jail.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2026
He was stepping up to the plate to run against Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who has long bedeviled Democrats.
From Slate ● Apr. 13, 2026
To them, any bird of prey must be harassed, but goshawks must be unmercifully bedeviled.
From "On the Far Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Or, thanks to streaming services, we can keep the same six or seven albums from 2001-2009 on repeat for the rest of our crisis bedevilled lives.
From Salon ● Dec. 19, 2022
“Progress in arms control is also bedevilled by Newton’s Law,” he wrote in a 1987 essay.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 19, 2022
Toshiba, which has been bedevilled by accounting and governance crises since 2015, set up a special committee in April to solicit proposals after shareholders voted down a management-backed restructuring plan.
From Reuters ● Jun. 2, 2022
The project was mooted in the 1970s, but has been bedevilled by security threats, environmental concerns and a lack of funding.
From BBC ● May 15, 2022
I wondered pityingly when I should again behold him—if it might be that his poor wits were bedevilled past mending.
From Ruggles of Red Gap by Harry Leon Wilson
"But they will soon be bumping against the external problems that are bedeviling the industry."
From Barron's ● Jul. 16, 2026
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent the next two years bedeviling Mr. Trump.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 11, 2026
Mateo represents a paradox bedeviling the U.S. nursing landscape.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2025
Not surprisingly, their questions were the same ones bedeviling the rest of us.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2024
He could not enter any house, or come in contact with any person or thing, without utterly bedeviling them.
From Old New Zealand A Tale of the Good Old Times; and A History of the War in the North against the Chief Heke, in the Year 1845 by A Pakeha Maori
Those updates should shrink the error bars on the telescope’s calibrations from the tens of percentage points that have been bedevilling astronomers in some areas, down to just a few percentage points.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 11, 2022
But the supply-chain snarl-ups, container traffic jams and chip shortages bedevilling companies worldwide show no signs of going away any time soon.
From Reuters ● Oct. 26, 2021
Zuckerberg is hoping to erect a scalable system, an orderly decision tree that accounts for every eventuality and exception, but the boundaries of speech are a bedevilling problem that defies mechanistic fixes.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018
This roving caravan of marvels would be a logistical nightmare and a financial impossibility, but it would best express the ethos of the global museum, free of the bedevilling complications of place.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 2, 2015
Tarleton’s white rangers were bedevilling the land, and it was at this time that Erskine Dale once more rode Firefly to the river James.
From Erskine Dale?Pioneer by John Fox
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
