Definition of "infernal" []

• Of or relating to a lower world of the dead. (adjective)
• Of or relating to hell: infernal punishments; infernal powers. (adjective)
• Fiendish; diabolical: infernal instruments of war. (adjective)
• Abominable; awful: the infernal racket of the jackhammers. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "His experience and training with the Mounted Police made it difficult for him to accept with equal mind what he called the infernal cheek of a bunch of Indians."
• "Her books contain infernal hints, Christological echoes, centaurs, phoenixes, house-elves and Moaning Myrtle — a postmodern superfluity of myth and invention into which she dips and dips and keeps on dipping, because it will never be exhausted, and it will never quite add up."
• "Perhaps infernal is the perfect word; perhaps, after all, we are living in a species of Hell."