dick·ens

(dĭk′ənz)

n. Informal

1. A reprimand or expression of anger: gave me the dickens for being late.

2. Used as an intensive: What in the dickens is that?

[Alteration of devil (influenced by the name Dickens).]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

dickens

(ˈdɪkɪnz)

informal a euphemistic word for devil: what the dickens?.

[C16: from the name Dickens]

Dickens

(ˈdɪkɪnz)

(Biography) Charles (John Huffam), pen name Boz. 1812–70, English novelist, famous for the humour and sympathy of his characterization and his criticism of social injustice. His major works include The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1839), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), and Great Expectations (1861)

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

dick•ens

(ˈdɪk ɪnz)

n.

devil; deuce (usu. prec. by the).

[1590–1600]

Dick•ens

(ˈdɪk ɪnz)

n.

Charles (John Huf•fam) (ˈhʌf əm) ( “Boz” ), 1812–70, English novelist.

Dick•en•si•an (dɪˈkɛn zi ən) adj.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	dickens - a word used in exclamations of confusion; "what the devil"; "the deuce with it"; "the dickens you say" deuce, devil exclaiming, exclamation - an abrupt excited utterance; "she gave an exclamation of delight"; "there was much exclaiming over it"
	2.	Dickens - English writer whose novels depicted and criticized social injustice (1812-1870) Charles Dickens, Charles John Huffam Dickens

Translations

dickens

n (euph inf: = devil) → Teufel m ? devil N c

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

CHARLES DICKENS was a novelist who lived and wrote at the same time as Thackeray.

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"Dickens," he remarked, "that's a queer-looking fellow at the further end of the room.

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I'm not much used to small arms, seeing that I was stationed at the ammunition- boxes, being summat too low-rigged to see over the ham- mock-cloths; but I can carry the game, dye see, and mayhap make out to lend a hand with the traps; and if- so-be you’re any way so handy with them as ye be with your boat-hook, ‘twill be but a short cruise after all, I've squared the yards with Squire Dickens this morning, and I shall send him word that he needn’t bear my name on the books again till such time as the cruise is over.”

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Elizabethan prose, all too chaotic in the beauty and force which overflowed into it from Elizabethan poetry, and incorrect with an incorrectness which leaves it scarcely legitimate prose at all: then, in reaction against that, the correctness of Dryden, and his followers through the eighteenth century, determining the standard of a prose in the proper sense, not inferior to the prose of the Augustan age in Latin, or of the "great age in France": and, again in reaction against this, the wild mixture of poetry and prose, in our wild nineteenth century, under the influence of such writers as Dickens and Carlyle: such are the three periods into which the story of our prose literature divides itself.

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It was written at Paris, when I had Charles Dickens for a near neighbor and a daily companion, and when my leisure hours were joyously passed with many other friends, all associated with literature and art, of whom the admirable comedian, Regnier, is now the only survivor.

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That this state-room had been specially engaged for 'Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady,' was rendered sufficiently clear even to my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing the fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress, spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf.

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"Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree.

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My misfortune was to carry it into print when I began to write a story, in the Ik Marvel manner, or rather to compose it in type at the case, for that was what I did; and it was not altogether imitated from Ik Marvel either, for I drew upon the easier art of Dickens at times, and helped myself out with bald parodies of Bleak House in many places.

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Here I had the dickens' own time keeping the female from Juag's throat.

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His cheeks were shaved, and his whitening beard and moustache were worn somewhat after the fashion of Charles Dickens. This gave a slight touch of severity to a face that was full of quiet strength.

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You open a book and try to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickens is dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental.

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"Dear Charles Dickens," he murmured, smiling a little at his own emotion.

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