evil

evil adj *bad, ill, wicked, naughty

Analogous words: *base, low, vile: iniquitous, nefarious, flagitious, *vicious, villainous, infamous: *pernicious, baneful: *execrable, damnable

Antonyms: exemplary: salutary

evil n Evil, ill are comparable when they mean whatever is harmful or disastrous to morals or well-being.

Evil is the ordinary term capable of use in all contexts and referable not only to deeds and practices actually indulged in or to conditions actually suffered

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lea"d a life of evil

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the evils of war

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correct the evils in a system of government

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but also to motivating desires or actuating causes of such deeds, practices, or conditions

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think no evil

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shun evil

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and to their harmful effects or consequences

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the evil that men do lives after them— Shak.

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evils which our own misdeeds have wrought— Miltony

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Evil is also the term in general use for the abstract conception of whatever is the reverse of good, especially of the morally good, or as a designation of whatever is thought of as the reverse of a blessing

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able to distinguish good from evil

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the origin of evil

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St. Francis of Assisi accounted poverty a blessing rather than an evil

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evil no nature hath; the loss of good is that which gives to sin a livelihood— Herrick

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evil is not a quality of things as such. It is a quality of our relation to them— Lippmann

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Although ill, like evil, may imply an antithesis to good, it is seldom used to designate the abstraction except in a poetic context and in direct contrast to good

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O, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill— Tennyson

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Also, it is now rare in the sense of moral evil. In present use, as in the past, ill is applied chiefly to whatever is distressing, painful, or injurious and is more often used in reference to what is actually suffered or endured than to what may be inflicted or imposed on one

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and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of— Shak.

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they could never in such a Utopian State feel any other ills than those which arise from bodily sickness— Hume

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there mark what ills the scholar's life assail—toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail— Johnson

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servitude, the worst of ills— Cowper

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Antonyms: good