Faust

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A magician and alchemist in German legend who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for power and knowledge.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• A tragedy by Goethe, commenced in 1772, and published. as “Faust, ein Fragment” in 1790. Part 1, complete, was published as "Faust, eine Tragödie" in 1808; part 2, finished in 1831, was published in 1833. It has been translated into English by Bayard Taylor, Blackie, Anster, Hayward, Martin, and others (nearly 40 in all). Goethe accomplished the transformation of Faust from a common necromancer and conjurer into a personification of humanity, tempted and disquieted, but at length groping its way to the light. See Goethe.
• An opera by Gounod (words, after Goethe, by Carré and Barbier) represented at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris, March 19, 1859.
• An opera by Spohr, first produced at Frankfurt in 1818. The words, which do not follow Goethe's play, are by Bernhard.
• noun an alchemist of German legend who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge.
• Doctor Johann Faust, a person born at Kundling (Knittlingen), Würtemberg, or at Roda, near Weimar, and said to have died in 1588. He was a man of licentious character, a magician, astrologer, and soothsayer, who boasted of performing the miracles of Christ. It was believed that he was carried off at last by the devil, who had lived with him in the form of a black dog.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• proper noun a magician and alchemist of German lore who sold his soul to the Devil for knowledge

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun an alchemist of German legend who sold his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge