evil
/ˈiːvəl/ adjective, noun, adverb
Forms eviller eviler evillest evilest evils
- adjective Intending to harm; malevolent. “an evil plot to brainwash and even kill innocent people”
- adjective Morally corrupt. “If something is evil, it is never mandatory.”
- adjective Unpleasant, foul (of odor, taste, mood, weather, etc.).
- adjective Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous.
- adjective (obsolete) Having harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious. “an evil beast; an evil plant; an evil crop”
- adjective (computing, programming, slang) Undesirable; harmful; bad practice. “Global variables are evil; storing processing context in object member variables allows those objects to be reused in a much more flexible way.”
- noun Moral badness; wickedness; malevolence; the forces or behaviors that are the opposite or enemy of good. “The evils of society include murder and theft.”
- noun Something which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; something which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; harm; injury; mischief.
- noun (obsolete) A malady or disease; especially in combination, as in king's evil, colt evil.
- adverb (obsolete) wickedly, evilly, iniquitously
- adverb (obsolete) injuriously, harmfully; in a damaging way.
- adverb (obsolete) badly, poorly; in an insufficient way. “It went evil with him.”
Synonyms
nefarious malicious malevolent wicked abandoned arrant bad bad apple bad seed baleful scurrilous baneful base black-hearted dark deleterious demonic depraved despicable detrimental immorality wickedness iniquity evilness vicious malefic malign
Antonyms
good angelic benign good-minded just moral righteous well-intentioned
Etymology
From Middle English yvel, evel, ivel, uvel, from Old English yfel, from Proto-West Germanic *ubil, from Proto-Germanic *ubilaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂up(h₁)élos, a deverbal derivative of *h₂wep(h₁)-, *h₂wop(h₁)- (“treat badly”). See -le for the supposed suffix.
Alternatively from *upélos (“evil”, literally “going over or beyond (acceptable limits)”), from Proto-Indo-European *upo, *h₃ewp- (“down, up, over”).
Cognate with Dutch euvel (“evil”), German übel (“bad, evil”), German Low German övel (“evil”), Luxembourgish iwwel (“queasy, nauseous; bad”), Gothic 𐌿𐌱𐌹𐌻𐍃 (ubils, “bad, evil”). Compare Old Irish fel (“bad, evil”), from Proto-Celtic *uɸelos, and Hittite 𒄷𒉿𒀊𒍣 (huwapp-ⁱ, “to mistreat, harass”), 𒄷𒉿𒀊𒉺𒀸 (huwappa-, “evil, badness”).
From Middle English yvele, yvel, ivel, from Old English yfele (“badly, evilly”), a derivative of the adjective yfel (“bad, evil”). Often reinterpreted as the noun in the later language (as in "to speak evil").
Webster’s 1913
- Having qualities tending to injury and mischief; having a nature or properties which tend to badness; mischievous; not good; worthless or deleterious; poor; as, an evil beast; and evil plant; an evil crop.
- Having or exhibiting bad moral qualities; morally corrupt; wicked; wrong; vicious; as, evil conduct, thoughts, heart, words, and the like.
- Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; --opposed to Ant: good.
- Moral badness, or the deviation of a moral being from the principles of virtue imposed by conscience, or by the will of the Supreme Being, or by the principles of a lawful human authority; disposition to do wrong; moral offence; wickedness; depravity.
Etymology [OE. evel, evil, ifel, uvel, AS. yfel; akin to OFries, evel, D. euvel, OS. & OHG. ubil, G. übel, Goth. ubils, and perh. to E. over.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “evil”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details