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Mephistopheles is a name for the devil — but a special one. In the old German story of Faust, a man sells his soul. The devil who comes to talk, bargain, and him is called Mephistopheles, not usually Satan. He is clever, polite, and dangerous: the talking devil of that story, offering knowledge and pleasure in exchange for a soul. People later use the name more loosely for any devil, or, in a way, for a charming person who seems to lead you into trouble — though actually that stretch belongs to books, theatre, and music, not to ordinary chat. You will meet it in plays, operas, and literature classes. It is a proper name, so it keeps a capital M. How to say it is a mouthful; teachers often approximate mef-iss-TOF-uh-leez.
梅菲斯特（浮士德故事裡來談條件的那個魔鬼）
組成Origin uncertain. Because of the Greek-looking -ph- and the -es ending (as in Aristoteles), many people have guessed it was a Greek compound along the lines of ‘not loving light’ (mē ‘not’, phōs ‘light’, phileîn ‘to love’). That is a popular reading, not a proven one.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Mephistophelesname/ˌmɛ.fɪˈstɒ.fɪ.liːz/
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The Devil to whom Faust sold his soul in the legend.
- I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
- When I'm at the pearly gates / This'll be on my videotape, my videotape / When Mephistopheles is just beneath / And he's reaching up to grab me
Mephistophelesnoun/ˌmɛ.fɪˈstɒ.fɪ.liːz/
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A fiendish person, especially one who tricks someone into following a destructive or disastrous course of action; a tempter.
- Poison in my idle mind makes quick work for the Mephistopheles, / Who quickly makes his excuses
- A man weeping in moral torment over bags of money; another so bored, depressed and isolated that he can barely raise his eyes to yet another shopping cart full of cash. These are the products of what I have come to think of as Donaldson in full Mephistopheles mode. “Look what these creatures of flesh and blood will do for cash,” he seems constantly on the verge of intoning, as he observes his subjects like so many mazed rats.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。