the devil a one | Idiomator

Meaning: (nowregional,dated,idiomatic,slang)Not a single one,none(ofa number of people or things).1653,Thomas Urquhart, transl.,The First Book of the Works of Mr.Francis Rabelais‎[1], London: Richard Baddeley,Book 2, Chapter 26, p. 168-169:making great chear with a good deal of vineger,the devil a oneof them did forbear from his victuals, it was a triumphant and incomparable spectacle to see how they ravened and devoured.1709,Susanna Centlivre,The Man’s Bewitch’d‎[2], London: Bernard Lintott, act V, page66:[…]she wou’d have corrupted all their Wives;the Devil a onewou’d have made her own Butter, after being acquainted with her.1790,John O’Keeffe,The Highland Reel‎[3], Dublin, act 2, page34:(He helps them on with the clothes.) There,the devil a oneof them can know you now—[…]you’re so nicely disguised,c.1813, anonymous author, “Perry’s Victory”, in Robert W. Neeser, editor,American Naval Songs and Ballads‎[4], New Haven: Yale University Press, published1938, page187:Whole volleys of muskets were level’d at him,Butthe devil a oneever graz’d e’en a limb,1912,George A. Birmingham,Priscilla’s Spies,New York: Hodder and Stoughton, G.H. Doran, Chapter 14, pp. 183-184,[5]Jimmy says it’s hard to tell what she’d be after. He did think at the first go off that it might be cockles; but it’s not, for he took her to Carribee strand, where there’s plenty of them, andthe devil a oneshe’d pick up.; (nowregional,dated,idiomatic,slang)Not;with a singular pronoun, negates the clause.The devil a oneof me will ever set foot there.1916, Seumas O’Brien, “The Lady of the Moon”, inThe Whale and the Grasshopper and other Fables,‎[6], Boston: Little, Brown, page164:[…]I met just as strange a man, and he sitting on his hat on the banks of the Fairy Lake of Lisnavarna, watching the moon’s reflection in the clear waters, andthe devil a oneof him knew that he was contrary at all.

Examples:

No examples available.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).