devilry

He possessed both the winemaking skills and an appetite for devilry.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2025

That makes a person wonder what manner of devilry they're concealing; after all, if there's literally nothing to see in front of us, surely it's hiding elsewhere.

From Salon ● Feb. 12, 2022

Whereas the dread of devilry, in “The Witch,” was rooted deep in the faith of the early settlers, “The Lighthouse” has to create its own mythology as it goes along.

From The New Yorker ● Oct. 18, 2019

A different, more downbeat brand of devilry is afoot in "The Exorcist," which takes off from William Peter Blatty’s bestselling 1971 novel and director William Friedkin's 1973 film.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2016

‘There’s some devilry at work in the Shire,’ he said.

From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

We moderns, disbelieving in devilries, would require the most elaborately romantic and poetic accessories—a splendid lurid back-ground, a magnificent Byronian invocation of the fiend.

From Belcaro Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions by Vernon Lee

Theer comed a circus here last month, with braave doin’s in the way of horsemanship and Merry Andrews, and such like devilries.

From Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts

I have had enough of these small devilries, like Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel—I am sick of Mazzini and his petty followers.

From Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General by Charles James Lever

Just about that time, the devilries of war between the Emperor and King had been stirred up again, so that I found him much harassed by anxieties.

From Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by John Addington Symonds

Giuliano, who had been an associate of the Duke and an abettor of Lorenzino's "devilries," fled precipitately from Florence, and sought the protection of the Duke of Milan.

From The Tragedies of the Medici by Edgcumbe Staley