"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 02/03/18 (talk of the devil)

I have a look behind the phrase "talk of the devil, which we bandy aroung these days. Talk of the devil is said when someone arrives at a scene just as they are being spoken of. Nothing sinister about it, as I say, we tend to use it fairly playfully these days. And, yet, if you look back over its history you will see that it wasn't used light-heartedly at all. The full form, ans you are probably familiar with this too, was "speak of the devil and he will appear". And it originated in England. You will find it not just in Old English texts but in Latin texts as well. The firsr record that we have were in around the 1666, which is quite appropriate. The English say, "talk of the devil and he is presently at your elbow", and a book of proverbs from the same time was, "talk of the devil and see his horns". Now, around this time you could still refer to the devil. Shakespeare did it lots, for example. So, in The Comedy Of  Errors you will find, "Marry, he must have a long spoon, that must eat with the devil". But, for the most part, there was an incredibly strong superstitious belief that it was really dangerous to mention the devil by name. And, even the clergy got in on the act too. The Dean of Westminster, 1856, a man called Richard Trench, wrote, "talk of the devil and he is bound to appear containts a very needful warning about curiosity of evil". So lots and lots of warnings there. And it was rather like mentioning God in public. You did everything you could to avoid it, which is why we have so many minced oaths which I often talk about on the programme. Things like gadzooks for God's hooks, the hails of crucifix, Gordon Bennet, cor blimey, Jiminy Cricket for Jesus Christ, etc. We have a lot of those. We also brought in quite a lot of euphenisms for the devil too, so "what the dickens" has nothing to do with Charles Dickens and everything to do with the devil. It goes back to the 16th century, probably the play on a popular surename of the times, Dickens, but it was used as a substitute for the devil. We have The Prince of Darkness, of course. We have the horned one and we have old Nick. And old Nick, there are two theories about this. One is that it goes back to the word "iniquity", and it is a shortening of that, inequity meaning evil. Or, that it comes from the first name of Machiavelli, Niccolo. Machiavelli, of course, wrote The Prince in which he said that some, in order to gain power some unethical methods were just about all right but people exaggerated this claim and saw it as justification for evil. So it's possible that Old Nick comes from that too. Yes, when you say talk of the devil these days, just have a think about how serious it was many, many centuries ago when you did absolutely everything you could, not just to avoid the devil but also his name.