Rating Newest Oldest. Best Answer: Seems like the dickens is a nice way of saying the devil, Dickens being one of the many euphemistic names for Satan, such as Old Scratch, Prince of Darkness and Dick Cheney. This saying (as well as what the dickens) go back at least as far as Shakespeare, who used it in The Merry Wives of Windsor. So hot as the dickens really means hot as hell or hot as that wonk Al Gore says the world's gonna be if we don't get our act together. Source(s): Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins, New York, 1977, 1988).