Dictionary

pandemoniacal en · ADJ

Etymology

From pandemoniac + -al or pan- + demoniacal.

Meanings

1. Relating to, resembling, or characteristic of, a pandemonium.
   • Then, at once he makes a headlong plunge among pistons, and vales, and cylinders, and beams, and plungers, excentrics, pumps, buckets, gudgeons, cranks, connecting rods, expansions, condensations, explosions, rotations, and revolutions; among which he runs riot, and whirls them round him in a chaos of pandemoniacal confusion; 1839 July 27, The Athenæum: Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, London, page 558, column 2:
   • […]sooner locate beside the fœtid banks of a Batavian canal, sooner become a toll-keeper of Lethe’s wharf, than breathe my summer breath within scent of thine unsavoury odours, within reach of thy pandemoniacal sounds! 1841, [Catherine Gore], Cecil: or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb, volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, pages 132–133:
   • Crockford having already upraised a pandemoniacal temple on a scale of brilliancy; 1843, Albany Poyntz, “Clubs and Clubmen”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume XIV, London: Richard Bentley, […], page 456:

Forms