Both Uses of
diabolical
in
The Scarlet Letter
- This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul.†
p. 118.5 *
- Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose.†
p. 134.7
Definitions:
-
(1)
(diabolical) evil; very bad; or cruel and clever (like something of the devil)
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
More rarely (and then in British English), diabolical can mean very bad -- as in "The traffic was diabolical."