> as lemmas

b. The personification or spirit of mischief, the devil. Originally, in exclamatory and interjectional phrases; often as a mere expression of impatience or emphasis: as, what the (†what a) deuce?, so who, how, where, when the deuce?, (the) deuce take it!, the deuce is in it! Later, in other phrases parallel to those under devil n.: to play the deuce (with), the deuce and all, the deuce to pay, a deuce of a mess, etc.In the quotations under a (to which the earliest instances belong), ‘plague’ or ‘mischief’ is evidently the sense: cf. the parallel and earlier ‘A mischief (a pox, or a plague) on him!’ ‘Mischief (or plague) take you!’ ‘What a mischief (pox, plague)!’ This meaning is also possible in those under b¹: cf. the parallel ‘What the mischief (or the plague)!’ But mischief was personified already before 1700, and ‘the Mischief’ was in the late 18th cent. a frequent euphemism for ‘the devil’; that deuce was already taken in this sense in 1708 is evident from Motteux's use of it as = French diantre, in b². In the other quotations in the same group, ‘deuce’ plainly takes the place of ‘devil’ in well-known phrases; but such clearly personified uses as ‘the deuce knows’, ‘to go to the deuce’, appear late.