- pure
- pure 1 Pure, absolute, simple, sheer denote free from everything that is foreign to the true nature or the essential character of the thing specified.Pure distinctively suggests freedom from intermixture. When applied to concrete things, it usually implies lack of contamination, adulteration, or pollution{
pure water
}{a pure breed
}When applied to an abstraction or to a concrete example of an abstraction, it implies the absence of everything that would obscure the thing in its essence or in its ideal character{pure poetry
}{an institute devoted to pure physics, as distinct from applied physics— Endeavour
}{as there is a constant mingling of Hebrew and Aramaic passages, the Aramaic is not pure— Barton
}Absolute implies freedom from relation to or dependence on anything else; it is applied chiefly to abstractions (as space, time, and magnitude) viewed independently of experience and considered in their ultimate ideal character; thus, absolute space, as used in physics, is space conceived of as apart from the things which occupy it, and which limit or determine the ordinary person's notion of it. Because of such use, absolute often comes close to real, as opposed to apparent. Absolute music, in theory, is music that depends solely on such distinctive properties of that art as tone, harmony, and rhythm to produce its effects, and avoids, in contrast to program music, all suggestion or characterization of external things. Absolute is applied to substances less often than is pure, but both are applied to alcohol: pure alcohol is free from other matter except for a modicum of water; absolute alcohol is both pure and completely dehydrated.Simple stresses singleness of character and is distinguished from what is compound or complex. It can connote homogeneity and incapacity for analysis or further reduction{an element is a simple substance
}{quality and relation are simple notions
}{was now confronted by simple beauty, pure and undeniable— Gibbons
}{too- elaborate deference paid them by the neighbors embarrassed them and caused them to clothe their wealth in muted, simple gray— Styron
}Simple, as applied to abstractions or conceptions, often suggests artificial freedom from complexity, and sometimes also unreality or untruth, when the simplicity is attained by eliminating essential factors{the world to which your philosophy professor introduces you is simple .... The contradictions of real life are absent from it— James
}Sheer, more than any of these words, tends to lose its significance and to become a mere intensive{sheer nonsense
}However, it can distinctively imply such a dissociation from everything else that the pure and essential character of the quality (as a trait, virtue, or power) to which it is applied is clearly displayed{the "Ancient Mariner" ... is a work of sheer imagination— Lowes
}{he was part sheer technician, part delighted child when he could demonstrate his sound system— Theodore Sturgeon
}Antonyms: contaminated, polluted: adulterated (of foods, metals): applied (of science)2 *chaste, modest, decentAntonyms: impure: immoral
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
