devil

Picture an accusation being hurled across a room like a stone. That is the startling image inside Ancient Greek διαβάλλειν, “to throw across,” which came to mean “to slander” or “to attack,” from διά, “across,” plus βάλλω, “I throw.” Its agent noun, διάβολος, was used for a “false accuser” and became the Greek Christian name for Satan; Jerome’s Latin Bible preserved it as diabolus. By about 1200, English speakers had reshaped the borrowed word into devil, while German went its own phonetic way to Teufel and French and Spanish produced diable and diablo. The word’s older courtroom flavor never entirely vanished: a devil is, at root, not merely a monster with horns, but an accuser who throws charges across the social space. Even a “devil’s advocate” therefore carries a faint echo of the original slanderer—only now the verbal projectile is launched for argument rather than damnation.