evil
Pronunciation: /ˈiːvəl/
The English word “evil” has 12 meanings listed here.
adjective
- Intending to harm; malevolent.
- Morally corrupt.
- Unpleasant, foul (of odor, taste, mood, weather, etc.).
- Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous.
- Having harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious.
- Undesirable; harmful; bad practice.
noun
- Moral badness; wickedness; malevolence; the forces or behaviors that are the opposite or enemy of good.
- 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.
- A malady or disease; especially in combination, as in king's evil, colt evil.
adverb
- wickedly, evilly, iniquitously
- injuriously, harmfully; in a damaging way.
- badly, poorly; in an insufficient way.
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-…
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.