"pure evil" meaning in English

See pure evil in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Etymology: Has been rising in usage from other phrases using this sense of pure since around the 1950s. Has been rising exponentially as a set phrase since the 1990s. Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} pure evil (not comparable)
  1. (set phrase) Absolutely evil; having no sense of morality or mercy whatsoever. Tags: not-comparable
    Sense id: en-pure_evil-en-adj-Nj0w-OL~

Noun

Etymology: Has been rising in usage from other phrases using this sense of pure since around the 1950s. Has been rising exponentially as a set phrase since the 1990s. Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} pure evil (uncountable)
  1. (set phrase) Absolute evil; that has no sense of morality or mercy at all. Tags: uncountable
    Sense id: en-pure_evil-en-noun-10P3KXqK Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 8 92 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 10 90 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 8 92
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  "etymology_text": "Has been rising in usage from other phrases using this sense of pure since around the 1950s. Has been rising exponentially as a set phrase since the 1990s.",
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "_dis": "8 92",
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          "ref": "2022 May 26, Peter Bradshaw, “Pacifiction review – trouble in paradise, in apocalyptic Tahitian mystery”, in The Guardian:",
          "text": "I can only say I was captivated by the film and its stealthy evocation of pure evil.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
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        "(set phrase) Absolute evil; that has no sense of morality or mercy at all."
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          "text": "This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.",
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        "(set phrase) Absolutely evil; having no sense of morality or mercy whatsoever."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-13 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-03 using wiktextract (aeaf2a1 and fb63907). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.