bedevil
Americanverb (used with object)
-
bedevils,
present (3rd person singular)
-
bedeviled,
past participle, past
-
bedevilled,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
bedeviling,
present participle
-
bedevilling
present participle (especially British)
-
to torment or harass maliciously or diabolically, as with doubts, distractions, or worries.
-
to possess, as with a devil; bewitch.
-
to cause confusion or doubt in; muddle; confound.
an issue bedeviled by prejudices.
-
to beset or hamper continuously.
a new building bedeviled by elevator failures.
verb
-
to harass or torment
-
to throw into confusion
-
to possess, as with a devil
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
bedevilsimple
-
bedevilssimple
-
have bedeviledperfect
-
have bedevilledperfect
-
has bedeviledperfect
-
has bedevilledperfect
-
am bedevilingprogressive
-
am bedevillingprogressive
-
are bedevilingprogressive
-
are bedevillingprogressive
-
is bedevilingprogressive
-
is bedevillingprogressive
-
have been bedevilingperfect progressive
-
have been bedevillingperfect progressive
-
has been bedevilingperfect progressive
-
has been bedevillingperfect progressive
Past
-
bedeviledsimple
-
bedevilledsimple
-
had bedeviledperfect
-
had bedevilledperfect
-
was bedevilingprogressive
-
was bedevillingprogressive
-
were bedevilingprogressive
-
were bedevillingprogressive
-
had been bedevilingperfect progressive
-
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
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
The Midwife's Apprentice
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
This Week In Culture: September 28–October 4, 2019
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
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:
Could they ever, in some future utopia, substitute for war, economic competition and the other conflicts that bedevil human life?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
While the new ordinance lowers hurdles for landlords interested in converting their underused buildings, they still face market and regulatory forces that bedevil all housing developers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026
The film also retains surprising relevance today, as it explores a range of issues that continue to bedevil contemporary India.
From BBC ● May 17, 2024
Diseases like Alzheimer's, strokes and other cognitive impairments continue to bedevil doctors seeking a cure.
From Salon ● Apr. 4, 2024
Then he spat river water all over her skirt and she knew he lived to bedevil her again.
From "The Midwife's Apprentice" by Karen Cushman
That makes romance vulnerable to the same problem that bedevils almost every economic transaction: imperfect information.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
But those projects can be far from its data centers, a mismatch between supply and demand that bedevils the fractured and aging U.S. power grid.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 1, 2024
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
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
The model is a response to another problem that has bedeviled the explosives industry: Nobody wants a bomb factory in their backyard.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026
A question has bedeviled a wealthy Lake Tahoe enclave for years: Who is poisoning the towering trees that stand sentry on the lake’s North Shore?
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026
But if you are an AI company about to launch an IPO, you say that very soon you will cure cancers, produce music only angels have heard, solve equations that have bedeviled mankind for millennia.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
Homeless encampments, piles of trash, vermin, and car break-ins have bedeviled the 4000 block of Babcock Avenue in Studio City since the property was abandoned, said neighbor Clint Ledsworth.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026
A cascade of work flowed to their firm, partly because Root managed to solve a puzzle that had bedeviled Chicago builders ever since the city’s founding.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
Sir Wyn says three of the compensation schemes have been "bedevilled with unjustifiable delays" and redress has not been delivered promptly.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2025
The financial hit incurred from the industrial action, confirmed to Reuters by a third source inside the company, follows a record loss in 2022 when the utility was bedevilled by reactor outages.
From Reuters ● Apr. 13, 2023
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
The volunteers, flocking in mass to the front, changed entirely by their bedevilled fury the previous tactics of the war.
From The Sword of Honor, volumes 1 & 2 or The Foundation of the French Republic, A Tale of The French Revolution by Eug?ne Sue
"But they will soon be bumping against the external problems that are bedeviling the industry."
From Barron's ● Jul. 16, 2026
Some problems Smucker is facing are bedeviling other food makers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 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
Every word that might be significant in his bedeviling invitation of February twenty-second was gone over with the minatory harshness of medieval inquisitors.
From Villa Elsa A Story of German Family Life by Stuart Oliver Henry
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
The most recent strain bedevilling the EU arrived via Georgia in 2007.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 30, 2019
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
He'll be human or you wouldn't fall in love with him; and always he'll be pondering and bedevilling himself with queer ideas—because he'll be human.
From The Drums of Jeopardy by Harold MacGrath
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions 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.
