ˈkill-devil, n. (a.)
[f. kill v. + devil.]
A. n.
† 1. A recklessly daring fellow. Obs.
| c 1590 Marlowe Faust. iv, ‘Did ye see yonder tall fellow..? he has killed the devil.’ So I should be called Kill-devil all the parish over. |
2. A colloq. name for rum (see also quot. 1846). Obs. exc. Hist.
Hence prob. F. guildive (1722: ‘origine inconnue’, Littré and Hatz.-Darm.). N. Darnell Davis in Trans. Philol. Soc. 1885–7, 714.
| 1639 J. Josselyn Jrnl. 24 Sept. in Acct. Two Voy. (1674) 26 Captain Thomas Wannerton..drank to me a pint of kill-devil alias Rhum at a draught. c 1651 in N. D. Davis Cavaliers & Roundheads Barbados (1887) 112 The chiefe fudling they make in the Island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Devill, and this is made of suggar canes distilled, a hott, hellish and terrible liquor. 1654 Connect. Col. Rec. (1850) I. 255 Berbados Liquors, commonly called Rum, Kill Deuill, or the like. 1740 Hist. Jamaica ii. 31 Rum-punch is not improperly called Kill-devil; for Thousands lose their Lives by its means. 1796 Stedman Surinam I. 96 The furnace which distils the kill-devil. 1846 Swell's Night Guide 123/2 Kill-devil, new rum, from its pernicious quality. 1885 Century Mag. Apr. 884/2 Rum, or ‘kill-devil’, as it was everywhere called, was rendered plentiful by the trade with the West Indies and by the New England stills. 1970 M. Slater Caribbean Cooking 7 From sugar came rum, ‘kill-devil’, the spirit of cane. |
3. An artificial bait used in angling, made to spin in the water like a wounded fish.
| 1833 Bowlker's Art Angling 33 There are..three modes of Trolling... The third is called the kill-devil, and..it answers I think the best of all. 1839 P. Hawker Diary (1893) II. 161 Lord Saltoun's brass ‘Kill-devil,’ the only artificial bait the I ever found to take in our river. 1860 C. Simeon Stray Notes Fishing 22, I have fished with artificial spinning-baits (killdevils) of nearly every kind. |
B. adj. That would kill devils; deadly.
| 1831 E. J. Trelawny Adv. of a Younger Son III. xxxvi. 252 We distributed this kill-devil hell-paste in several parts of the vessel,..destroying ‘at one fell swoop’, all the reptiles which infested and annoyed us. |