Mephistophelian

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.

If gangsta rap is L.A.’s most famous musical export of the last three decades, it has come with a Mephistophelian curse.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 22, 2023

The series encourages our suspicion that Sabrina is more important to the Mephistophelian realm than she understands, which explains everybody’s jockeying for her soul.

From The New Yorker • Oct. 26, 2018

Lorne Malvo isn’t an antihero; he’s a Mephistophelian villain, and Lester Nygaard his contemptible, ear-flapped Faust.

From Slate • Dec. 22, 2014

Writing around the same time as Agee, the critic Parker Tyler noted “the mild Mephistophelian peaks of her eyebrows” and compared her with screen goddesses like Gene Tierney and Rita Hayworth.

From New York Times • Aug. 13, 2014

It is customary, and fairly correct, to describe his ethos as that of understanding and wit wholly divorced from morality, chivalry, or religion; yet he is never Mephistophelian.

From A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800 by Saintsbury, George