Mephistopheles
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
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.
Film and novel are umbilically linked, however, by the basic gambit—a “motiveless” crime committed by strangers and therefore difficult to solve—as well as by a riff on the Faust legend, with Bruno as Mephistopheles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
In life, however, Höfgen plays Faust, the weak, tempted one, while the part of Mephistopheles is taken by the Nazi state and its functionaries.
From New York Times ● Sep. 11, 2020
Rubbing his hands together, gleefully, like some kind of cut-rate Mephistopheles.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 28, 2019
He is playing Mephistopheles, the women are interpreting the child-devouring Lamia of Greek myth, and I’m watching day 13 of an unlikely and wildly ambitious film shoot.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 16, 2018
I hope to do "A Tragedy of To-day" this summer, and it can come out in the fall or next spring, with "Modern Mephistopheles," "Work," and "Moods."
From Louisa May Alcott : Her Life, Letters, and Journals by Louisa May Alcott
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.
