(v. t.) To throw into utter disorder and confusion, as if by the agency of evil spirits; to bring under diabolical influence; to torment.
(v. t.) To spoil; to corrupt.
Example Sentences:
(1) Similar paradoxes bedevilled all the other chief themes.
(2) But the bedeviled foray also works as a potent allegory on the slow, vice-like workings of conscience, as guilt hunts down the protagonists with the shrieking remorselessness of Greek furies.
(3) Complete monosomy 21 is claimed to be a rare chromosomal disorder in which the cytogenetic investigation is bedevilled by technical difficulties.
(4) The former chief of staff of Iraq’s army, General Babakir Zebari, who retired last year, conceded that the issue of ghost soldiers had bedevilled the military, along with vastly inflated tenders for weapons.
(5) Finally, there is abortion – an issue that bedevilled two of the GOP's Senate candidates, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, because they found it difficult to reconcile their extreme anti-abortion views with the question of whether pregnant rape victims should be able to get an abortion.
(6) Its complexity has bedevilled the sport since it was put in place in 2013, when set up by Formula One Mangement (FOM, run by Ecclestone) on behalf of owners CVC.
(7) Talking in his home and recording studio in the shipyard town of Perama, one of the areas worst hit by unemployment, Mitakidis is critical of those who won't stand up against the corruption that has long bedevilled the country.
(8) Finally, on what must be the umpteenth advantage, he finds one of the bruising aces that so bedevilled Nadal.
(9) In Scott & Bailey , for example, a good deal of the police work is mundane and the characters are bedevilled by the kinds of real-life domestic troubles that normally receive little more than lip service in police procedure.
(10) He acknowledges that the sector has been bedevilled in the past by accusations of secrecy and inefficiency.
(11) The "natural history" of prostate cancer may bedevil the development of guidelines for chemoprevention interventions.
(12) That ill-fated effort was bedeviled with missteps, including a question about climate change clumsily planted with an Iowan college student .
(13) Europe is an issue that has bedevilled the Tories for decades, splitting the party at crucial times in its history.
(14) The parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) is the other essential plank of oversight cited by the government, but it has also been bedevilled by criticism since it was established in 1994.
(15) With the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, Yemenis now have a chance to resolve the political crisis that has bedevilled the country since February.
(16) The effectiveness of the service given is bedevilled by certain features of the N.H.S.-in particular, the deplorable conditions of employment of staff in casualty departments.
(17) Soori Asgaram, a civil engineer who returned to Sri Lanka three months ago after living in Britain for 44 years, thought the result held out the best prospect for a resolution of the Tamil issue that has bedevilled the island for decades.
(18) The pope was elected with a mandate to shake up the church in Rome and help turn the page on an increasingly fraught and scandal-bedevilled papacy.
(19) Even before the spying controversy, the Key campaign was bedevilled by scandal, with a senior cabinet minister forced to resign following the publication of a book based on hacked emails that revealed links between the ruling centre-right National party and an attack-blogger.
(20) His emails home from his base in Paktika province near the border with Pakistan charted a growing disillusionment with his fellow soldiers, on a mission he apparently felt was bedevilled by gratuitous violence, racism and lack of purpose.
Torment
Definition:
(n.) An engine for casting stones.
(n.) Extreme pain; anguish; torture; the utmost degree of misery, either of body or mind.
(n.) That which gives pain, vexation, or misery.
(v. t.) To put to extreme pain or anguish; to inflict excruciating misery upon, either of body or mind; to torture.
(v. t.) To pain; to distress; to afflict.
(v. t.) To tease; to vex; to harass; as, to be tormented with importunities, or with petty annoyances.
(v. t.) To put into great agitation.
Example Sentences:
(1) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
(2) "It is difficult to imagine the torment experienced by the vulnerable victims of crimes such as these.
(3) While his citizens were being beaten and tormented in illegal detention, spokesmen for the then prime minister, Tony Blair, declared: "The Italian police had a difficult job to do.
(4) Yet the removal of two in-form goalscorers who were tormenting West Ham – first Aaron Lennon and then Lukaku – afforded the visitors the initiative.
(5) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
(6) Corner to USA though... 1.33am BST 20 mins More tempo in the American play now, but Belgium intercept again, and Mirallas torments them down the Belgian right flank before hitting a low cross in that's hoofed safely clear.
(7) It cannot be right that anyone who has found the courage to escape their abusive or violent partner should be subjected to the stress and torment of being confronted and interrogated by them in any court.” Research by charity Women’s Aid suggests a quarter of women in family court proceedings have been cross-examined by an abusive former partner.
(8) Shin Dong-hyuk said he was tormented to see his father alive and speaking in the video released by Pyongyang in October.
(9) In a torment of frustration, Mohammed stood outside the governor's and threw a can of petrol over himself.
(10) More than a quarter of hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia (no surprise to anyone who has been in hospital recently, where wards are full of men and women in great anxiety and torment) and they tend to stay for longer-than-average periods of time.
(11) Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island whose bipartisan bill will ensure a three-month extension of the federal benefits program, told the Guardian the measure would stimulate the economy and alleviate what he called the “mental torment” suffered by those long-term unemployed who now feel abandoned.
(12) It was only his inflexible determination, the quality that had made him a great general, that mastered the torments of ill-health – sleepless nights, fear of dying – to articulate his account for a devoted American audience.
(13) The man who devised these torments has a passing resemblance to El Greco's emaciated saints.
(14) Arsenal had no riposte to the blue and white striped waves that tormented them all evening.
(15) Father Michael, so brilliantly played by Sean Bean , was tormented by one such moment: his decision not to answer the phone to Helen Oyenusi (Muna Otaru) when she called to ask that he calm down her son.
(16) Suárez played as through affronted by the suggestion he might have fitness issues, tormenting England’s defence on a night that finished as a personal ordeal for Steven Gerrard.
(17) So often did John torment his elder brother – because, grouchy alcoholic prick that he was, he hated to acknowledge a debt – one has to wonder if he cast Francis in a minor part in Young Mr Lincoln simply to let him witness, day after day, his own signature role being forever obliterated by Henry Fonda's entrancing new reading.
(18) Shawcross, however, maintains there was no bad intent and said for that reason he has not been tormenting himself about the moment he collided with Ramsey's right leg and left the teenager writhing in agony.
(19) Since his withdrawal from the music scene, Shields has earned a reputation as the latter-day Brian Wilson, a tormented genius unable to produce a successor to Loveless, the Pet Sounds of UK avant-rock.
(20) Adding to the torment for Rodgers was a 120-minute performance before hosting Manchester City in the Premier League on Sunday at noon.