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
-
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:
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
Crime rates have dropped, homeless tent encampments that block sidewalks and bedevil retail businesses have shrunk and foot traffic and transit ridership have risen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 26, 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
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
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
As for the play, much still bedevils it.
From New York Times ● May 24, 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
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
The challenge of basing a long novel on a villain appears to have bedeviled Mr. Mahajan.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 11, 2026
No one is predicting the same type that bedeviled the economy during the 1970s, but the signs of a problem are there all the same.
From Barron's ● Mar. 6, 2026
Employment reforms have bedeviled successive Indian governments since the country first opened its economy to the world in 1991, after nearly half a century of autarky.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 26, 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
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
Radio interference has bedevilled other astronomical searches before, such as when flickering signals picked up at Parkes turned out to be the result of people microwaving their lunches.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 26, 2021
Incontinently he found himself bedevilled by thoughts that would not rest.
From The False Faces Further Adventures from the History of the Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance
"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
The em dash is already quite accustomed to controversy, with a long history of charming and bedeviling authors, journalists and academics.
From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2025
In less than two years the world was rid of most of what had been bedeviling it.
From And All the Earth a Grave by C. C. MacApp
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
Just how to balance the increasingly potent interests on display in Syria is bedevilling all who have tried.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 24, 2018
What on earth could be wrong with me, I asked myself, that I should be bedevilling my students in this fashion?
From The Unpopular Review, Number 19 July-December 1918 by Various
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.
