The devil is standing inside this word, and everything the word does is measured from him. At the centre, something simply belongs to him — a name, a figure in a painting, a power people feared. One step out, a person or a plan is not his but is as cruel as he is. One more step, in British speech, only the size of the word survives: the weather was diabolical means it was dreadful, and nobody is thinking about the devil at all.
From the word’s history
The word is diabolic plus the ending -al, and diabolic goes back to the devil himself. That is why the devil sense sits at the centre of the map even though it is no longer the commonest one.
這個字是 diabolic 加上字尾 -al，而 diabolic 一路回到「魔鬼」。所以即使今天「魔鬼的」已經不是最常見的用法，它仍然是這張圖的中心。
Wiktionary entry 'diabolical': 'From diabolic + -al.' (packet source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:777127362)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。