Belial
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A wicked demon in Christian and Jewish apocrypha.
"Here, too, the poet calls attention to Belial's role as one who blurs the borderline between essence and appearance: Belial himself seems fair (physically attractive), but is empty inside, and Milton was surely aware that in Hebrew the first syllable of the fallen angel's name means without."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Here, too, the poet calls attention to Belial's role as one who blurs the borderline between essence and appearance: Belial himself seems fair (physically attractive), but is empty inside, and Milton was surely aware that in Hebrew the first syllable of the fallen angel's name means without."
Etymology
Latin Bĕlĭal, Hebrew בְלִיַּעַל. Of uncertain origin. It has been conventionally been interpreted as בְּלִי (“without”) + a word meaning "use" (hence "useless, worthless"), but it is unclear what the latter word is.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.