Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also a dickens) a euph. for devil, the phr. (1) in a var. of questions, usu. what the dickens...? phr.

a.1597		Shakespeare Merry Wives III:4: I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
1725		Humourist 251: Sir, you don't know me; what the Dickens! Have not I, been whip’d at the Cart's Tail too?
1754		Foote Knights in Works (1799) I 82: Mally Pengrouse! Who the dickens is she?
1787		Hereford Jrnl 9 Aug. 4/1: But why the dickens don’t the man appear?
1825		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 4 Sept. 250/2: ‘[U]p I starts, and, says I, Who the dickens—(the Lord presarve us!)—who the dickens (says I) is that?’ .
1837		‘Impromptu’ Bentley’s Misc. Mar. 297: Who the dickens ‘Boz’ could be / Puzzled many a leaned elf; / Till time unveil’d the mystery, / And Boz appear’d as dickens’ self!
1841		Sporting Mag. Nov. 36: Dickens a man ever yit had luck who thravelled through Connemara without being wet to the shkin before he left it.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 306: ‘Who the Dickens are you?’ retorted Mr. Sponge, without looking round.
1853		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Sept. 58/2: The Dickens was pleased, and a pinch of hot brimstone took.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 41: How in the dickens can Joe Brown reduce a Major to a private, when he hasn’t done any thing?
1876		Appleton’s Journal (N.Y.) 22 Apr. 530/2: ‘What in the dickens now?’ said Colonel Dodge.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 9 May 12/2: ‘Not marry again?’ repeated the lady with amazement – ‘then (loudly) who the dickens do you suppose is to clean the boarders’ boots?’.
1890		H. Lawson ‘A Word to Texas Jack’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 65: Holy smoke! In such a saddle how the dickens can you fall?
1901		D. Cotsford Society Snapshots 37: Why the dickens has that stupid woman given me this chit of a child to take down.
1907		Gem 16 Mar. 3: Who the dickens may you be?
1911		Gem 16 Sept. 2: How the dickens do you know that, kid?
1911		S.F. Call 21 May 5/1: Where the dickens is my shirt?
1916		Nenagh Guardian 12 Feb. 3/1: Why in the dickens didn’t you call around for me?
1920		Marvel 10 Apr. 19: Higgins is asking how the dickens you did it.
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 34: I remember wondering [...] how the dickens a man could bring himelf to wear a coat like that.
1929		N. Jacob Man Who Found Himself (1952) 104: Where the dickens did Jane find the feller?
1979		C. Dexter Service of all the Dead (1980) 151: And where the Dickens, he wondered, were they off to now?
1991		Reeves & Mortimer Vic Reeves Big Night Out n.p.: How the dickens do I go forward in time fifteen centuries?

2. (also the dickons) a general intensifier used to express anger, annoyance, impatience; a euph. for devil, the phr. (2)

1653		Rabelais Author’s Prologue (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel I 7: But hearken joltheads [...] or dickens take ye, remember to drink a health to me.
1728		Vanbrugh & Cibber Provoked Husband IV i: The dickens! has this Rogue of a Count played us another Trick then?
c.1815		J.K. Paulding Bucktails (1847) III i: The dickons it don’t!
1824		R.B. Peake Americans Abroad II iii: Oh! the dickens – I’m stunded!
1832		S. Lover Legends and Stories 139: The dickens a room I ever kem across afore.
1842		S. Lover Handy Andy 293: She offered rewards, and the dickens knows all.
1900		Sporting Times 27 Jan. 1/2: The dickens take Tory, the devil take Rad.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 2 Nov. 1s/3: ‘Dicken to you,’ cheekily replied the strenuous Yid.
1922		E. Raymond Tell England (1965) 306: The dickens! What does it mean?
1937		E. Anderson Thieves Like Us (1999) 114: You didn’t bat an eye, you doggone little dickens.
1943		R.L. Bellem ‘Dead Man’s Guilt’ Dan Turner – Hollywood Detective May 🌐 ‘I’m Dan Turner, private skulk’ [...] ‘The dickens you preach!’.
1985		J. Wambaugh Secrets of Harry Bright (1986) 231: You little dickens!

3. a general intensifier implying quantity or intensity.

1875		Auckland Eve. Star (Supp.) 30 Oct. 6/2: Getting the dickens and all of a cold in my head.
1884		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Huckleberry Finn 198: Walk fast now [...] then shin for the raft like the dickens was after you!
1900		Marvel 12 Nov. 4: I wish to dickens you hadn’t!
1902		A. Bennett Grand Babylon Hotel 226: There would be the dickens of an upset in New York – a sort of grand universal slump in my holdings.
1915		T. McNamara Us Boys 6 Aug. [synd. cartoon strip] When the ship started to move I got scared as the dickens.
1917		Wodehouse ‘A Sea Of Troubles’ in Man with Two Left Feet 187: Instinct told him that it would hurt like the very dickens.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 15: When a fellow’s worked like the dickens all day.
1922		N.Z. Truth 29 Apr. 1/7: Must have been the Dickens-and-all of a clap to ‘consuss’ [sic] like that.
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 74: I clinched it, I got the milkman his damages. I’m pleased as the dickens.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Dream Street Rose’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 48: She can fight like the dickens when she is grogged up.
1932		(con. 1919) Dos Passos Nineteen Nineteen in USA (1966) 650: I’m lonely as the dickens.
1940		M. de la Roche Whiteoak Heritage (1949) 72: You did hurt it after all. It’s aching like the dickens.
1960		Wodehouse Jeeves in the Offing 75: Affectionate nephews hate like the dickens to blot the sunshine from the lives of uncles.
1976		C. Dexter Last Seen Wearing in Second Inspector Morse Omnibus (1994) 392: As if she was in a dickens of a hurry to meet somebody.
1983		M. Read Scouting for Boys in Best Radio Plays (1984) 165: We haven’t used the gong in years, it’s the dickens of a row.
1997		(con. 1916) D. Farson Never a Normal Man 16: The rest of us went back and had the dickens of a tea off hired gold plate!
1997		C. Hiaasen Lucky You 323: Trish said it must hurt like the dickens.
2014		M. McBride Swollen Red Sun 96: ‘That shit [i.e. pepper spray] burns like the dickens, man’.

4. a euph. for hell in terms like play (merry) hell with under hell n.; raise hell under hell n.

1771		Smollett Humphrey Clinker (1925) I 141: He would roar, and tear, and play the dickens.
1834		(con. 1737–9) W.H. Ainsworth Rookwood (1857) 258: For vere the odds are thus made even, / It plays the dickens with the steven.
1869		Sportsman (London) 10 Apr. 4/1: Notes on News [...] [It] ‘plays the dickens’ with the game [of whist] as at present played.
1890		Bird o’ Freedom 1 Jan. 1/4: I’m sick of hearing about this, that, and the other man’s or woman’s festive dinner. It may go to the dickens for me.
1891		in Punch 21 Feb. 87: With you and me, NAN, it will play the dickens.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 54: ‘Oh, go to the dickens!’ cried his wife.
1912		B. Jones ‘Everybody Loves a Chicken’ 🎵 You can always raise the dickens when you’re with a lot of Chickens.
1928		R. Carr Rampant Age 311: The way you girls do is raise the dickens and bawl a fellow out.
1933		J. Conroy Disinherited 144: A fellow like Ed, who would show them a good time and raise the dickens.
1962		R. Cook Crust on its Uppers 68: It’s going to play the very dickens with my overdraft.
1970		Meyer & Ebert Beyond Valley of the Dolls [film script] My father raised the dickens [...] thought I’d gone the eway of Oscar Wilde.

5. a euph. for sexual intercourse or other activity.

1993

S. King Dolores Claiborne 182: ‘Maybe you n me can get up to dickens later on. What do you think about that, Dee?’ ‘Maybe,’ I says, all the time thinkin there was gonna be plenty of dickens, all right. Before it got dark for the second time that day, Joe St George was gonna get more dickens than he’d ever dreamed of.