half-diabolical

Updated: May 8, 2025

While one worked, the other watched or fished at the minnow pool, so that there was steady progress as long as I observed them. For years I had regarded Koskomenos, as the birds and the rest of the world regard him, as a noisy, half-diabolical creature, between bird and lizard, whom one must pass by with suspicion. But that affair with the mink changed my feelings a bit.

William J. (William Joseph) Long - Secrets of the Woods

The stranger came nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile that he gave Helene. "Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come, since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to me." "Inconceivable!" cried her father. The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and Helene fled to her in tears.

Honoré de Balzac - A Woman of Thirty