speak of the devil

1. 1.

   mention someone's name who just then appears

   Broadermention

Questions about speak of the devil

What does speak of the devil mean?

speak of the devil means "mention someone's name who just then appears".

Is speak of the devil a common word?

speak of the devil is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.