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
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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:
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
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
The same anxiety that has always bedeviled men.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 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
It is a piece of information that has bedeviled me since I read it 10 years ago, as I could never quite figure out where and how it fit into the timing of events.
From Slate ● Dec. 1, 2025
I remembered the incident years ago when Granny was bedeviled by the two identical telephone booths.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
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
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
High-pressure tactics, official-sounding messages and other tricks are potentially bedeviling taxpayers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 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 was a mouse, bedeviling a cat with a broom straw.
From The Giants From Outer Space by Geoff St. Reynard
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
After bedevilling the officials for a time, our business for the day was over.
From Gold by Stewart Edward White
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.
