fiend

noun

1
b
: demon
c
: a person of great wickedness or maliciousness
2
: a person extremely devoted to a pursuit or study : fanatic
a golf fiend
3
: addict sense 1
a dope fiend
4
: wizard sense 2
a fiend at mathematics

Examples of fiend in a Sentence

His hands were trembling, actually trembling, as if he were some sort of coffee fiend or something. T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Road to Wellville, 1993
Wodehouse may not have liked Dickens, but he certainly read him. He read like a fiend. Christopher Hitchens, Times Literary Supplement, 7-13 Sept. 1990
The shameless effrontery of the fiend, at the café, pretending to forget all he had done to her, begging to take up with her again, as if nothing had happened between them a dozen years ago. Irving Wallace, The Plot, 1967
a fiend in human form He's a real golf fiend.
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
So now these eight foreign fiends are in Djibouti, squatting in a shipping container on the U.S. Naval base there, guarded by 11 ICE agents who’d like to be home for Independence Day. Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 2 July 2025 Pickle fiends—which, apparently, includes most of our staff—will spot this beloved flavor at first whiff of these craveable chips. Erica Sloan, SELF, 10 June 2025 Jack O’Connell creepily plays the fiend like a cult leader, not looking to feast so much as assimilate. A.a. Dowd, Rolling Stone, 17 Apr. 2025 That’s perhaps to demonstrate how unaffected and unscathed that J.B., a comfortably middle-class white guy who comes from a comfortably middle-class family, is from all that noise of draft dodgers, dope fiends, and radical feminists banging on the door. Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 23 May 2025 See All Example Sentences for fiend

Word History

Etymology

Middle English, from Old English fīend; akin to Old High German fīant enemy, Sanskrit pīyati he reviles, blames

First Known Use

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Time Traveler
The first known use of fiend was before the 12th century

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Fiend.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiend. Accessed 8 Jul. 2025.

Kids Definition

fiend

noun
1
2
: an extremely wicked or cruel person
3
a
: a person enthusiastically devoted to something
fiendish
ˈfēn-dish
adjective
fiendishly adverb
fiendishness noun

More from Merriam-Webster on fiend

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