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.
-
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:
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
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
“These narratives form, and people can’t resist them, and that bedevils people time and time again,” says Ptak.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 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
This underscores that public safety — repeatedly cited as Seattleites’ greatest civic concern — is not a hopeless morass that bedevils concerted efforts to tackle.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 24, 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
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
The U.S. and Iran are locked in a diplomatic stalemate over issues that have bedeviled the two sides for years, as the conflict settles into a gray zone that is neither war nor peace.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 12, 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
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
The old man who had called the police was the same one whom we had constantly bedeviled as we snatched transfer pads earlier that week.
From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers
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 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
So that if you are not too bemused and bedevilled by my "brilliancy" to kick me downstairs, you may rely on me to cheerfully lend a foot in the operation.
From A Christmas Garland by Sir Max Beerbohm
"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
Bud was oblivious, for he had come into Bennett's Woods to try to solve the problems that were bedeviling him.
From The Black Fawn by James Arthur Kjelgaard
The whole affair became a test case for Pope Francis's aim of clearing up the Vatican's finances, which were long plagued by scandal, bedevilling the papacy of Francis's predecessor, Benedict XVI.
From BBC ● Dec. 16, 2023
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
O happy days, when men received From sire to son what all believed, And left the other world in bliss, Too busy with bedevilling this!
From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell by James Russell Lowell
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.
