archfiend
/ˈɑɹt͡ʃ.find/noun
archfiend is a noun meaning “A chief fiend (devil, demon or monster)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-R-C-H-F-I-E-N-D and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 47 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of archfiend is archfiends.
What does archfiend mean?
noun
- 1
A chief fiend (devil, demon or monster).
- 2
A diabolically evil person.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce archfiend?
- US /ˈɑɹt͡ʃ.find/
Archfiend has 2 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-archfiend.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of archfiend
- archfiends plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is archfiend?
Archfiend appears about once in every 47 million words in written English, the 211,986th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does archfiend come from?
From arch- + fiend. Compare German Erzfeind, Dutch aartsvijand.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).