archfiend

From arch- +‎ fiend. Compare German Erzfeind, Dutch aartsvijand.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɑɹt͡ʃ.find/

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archfiend (plural archfiends)

1. A chief fiend (devil, demon or monster).

   Synonyms: archdemon, archdevil

   • 1886, Charles Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria‎, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, Lecture 6, p. 197:

     Of those who rebelled some became devils, fiends or archfiends, according to the manifold proportions of their transgression.

   • 1947, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 342:

     […] he thought for a minute with a freezing detached almost amused calm of the dreadful night inevitably awaiting him whether he drank much more or not, his room shaking with daemonic orchestras […] the vicious shouting, the strumming, the slamming, the pounding, the battling with insolent archfiends, the avalanche breaking down the door, the proddings from under the bed, and always, outside, the cries, the wailing, the terrible music, the dark’s spinets:

   • 1977, Jeffrey Burton Russell, chapter 3, in The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity,‎, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, page 115:

     Seven chief demons, seven archfiends, aid Ahriman in his struggle against the forces of light.

2. (preceded by “the”, often capitalized) Satan.

   Synonym: Lucifer

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker ; nd by Robert Boulter ; nd Matthias Walker, , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC, lines 209-210:

     So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay
     Chain’d on the burning Lake,

   • 1759, William Kenrick, Epistles Philosophical and Moral‎, London: T. Wilcox, Epistle 6, page 210:

     In disobedience to his God,
     Did man himself call down the rod?
     Or did th’ arch-fiend, from Heav’n that fell,
     Inspire the mischief to rebel?

   • 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter 8, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. , volume II, London: for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 121:

     All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathised with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.

   • 1905 April–October, Upton Sinclair, chapter XXXI, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1906 February 26, →OCLC, page 397:

     And then the subject became Religion, which was the Arch-fiend’s deadliest weapon. Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind […]

3. (transferred sense) A diabolically evil person.
   • 1690, anonymous translator, The Royal Wanton (attributed to Gregorio Leti), London: F.B., Part 5, p. 48,

     her Arch-fiend and Devil of a Lord, had impudently sent the same Villain to abuse her once again.

   • 1888, W S Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, composer, “Act 2”, in The Yeomen of the Guard , London: Chappel & Co., , published c. 1911:

     So this is a plot to shield this arch-fiend, and I have detected it. A word from me, and three heads besides his would roll from their shoulders!

   • 1906 May–October, Jack London, chapter 3, in White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC, part 4 (The Superior Gods), pages 218–219:

     Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang’s spirit, but as yet there were not signs of his succeeding.

   • 1970, Irving Werstein, Shattered Decade: 1919-1929‎, New York: Scribner, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 17:

     […] in every hamlet of the United States where motion pictures were shown, bug-eyed filmgoers stared in horror at the celluloid villanies of the Huns, led by that archfiend Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Beast of Berlin.