Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having a homogeneous or uniform composition; not mixed: pure oxygen.
- adj. Free from adulterants or impurities: pure chocolate.
- adj. Free of dirt, defilement, or pollution: "A memory without blot or contamination must be . . . an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment” ( Charlotte Brontë).
- adj. Free of foreign elements.
- adj. Containing nothing inappropriate or extraneous: a pure literary style.
- adj. Complete; utter: pure folly.
- adj. Having no faults; sinless: "I felt pure and sweet as a new baby” ( Sylvia Plath).
- adj. Chaste; virgin.
- adj. Of unmixed blood or ancestry.
- adj. Genetics Produced by self-fertilization or continual inbreeding; homozygous: a pure line.
- adj. Music Free from discordant qualities: pure tones.
- adj. Linguistics Articulated with a single unchanging speech sound; monophthongal: a pure vowel.
- adj. Theoretical: pure science.
- adj. Philosophy Free of empirical elements: pure reason.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Free from extraneous matter; separate from matter of another kind; free from mixture; unmixed; clear; especially, free from matter that impairs or pollutes: Said of physical substances.
- Bare; mere; sheer; absolute; very: as, it was done out of pure spite; a pure villain.
- Sole; only.
- Whole; thorough; complete.
- Fine; nice.
- Figuratively, free from mixture with things of another kind; homogeneous.
- Free from mixture with that which contaminates, stains, defiles, or blemishes. Free from moral defilement or guilt; innocent; guileless; spotless; chaste: applied to persons.
- Ritually or ceremonially clean; unpolluted.
- Free from that which vitiates, pollutes, or degrades; unadulterated; genuine; stainless; sincere: said of thoughts, actions, motives, etc.
- In music: Of intervals, intonation, and harmony, mathematically correct or perfect: opposed to tempered.
- Of tones, without discordant quality.
- Of style of composition or of a particular work, correct; regular; finished.
- In metaphysics, of the nature of form; unmateriate; in the Kantian terminology, not depending on experience; non-sensuous.
- Logic based solely on a priori principles; a canon of the understanding and of the reason in reference to the formal element.
- Synonyms Uncorrupted, incorrupt, unsullied, untainted, untarnished, unstained, clean, fair, unspotted, unpolluted, undefiled, immaculate, guiltless, holy.
- n. Purity.
- n. In tanning, a bate of dog's dung, used for counteracting the action of the lime on the skins in the process of unhairing.
- Quite; very; absolutely; perfectly.
- To purify; cleanse; refine.
- Specifically In tanning, to cleanse with a bate of dog's dung.
- In biology, having germ-cells of only one kind and like those of a parent. See the extract.
Wiktionary
- adj. free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied.
- adj. free of foreign material or pollutants
- adj. free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean
- adj. of a branch of science, done for its own sake instead of serving another branch of science.
- adj. phonetics Of a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
- adv. Liverpudlian to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Separate from all heterogeneous or extraneous matter; free from mixture or combination; clean; mere; simple; unmixed.
- adj. Free from moral defilement or quilt; hence, innocent; guileless; chaste; -- applied to persons.
- adj. Free from that which harms, vitiates, weakens, or pollutes; genuine; real; perfect; -- applied to things and actions.
- adj. (Script.) Ritually clean; fitted for holy services.
- adj. (Phonetics) Of a single, simple sound or tone; -- said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. (of color) being chromatically pure; not diluted with white or grey or black
- adj. free from discordant qualities
- adj. concerned with theory and data rather than practice; opposed to applied
- adj. in a state of sexual virginity
- adj. free of extraneous elements of any kind
- adj. (used of persons or behaviors) having no faults; sinless.
- adj. without qualification; used informally as (often pejorative) intensifiers
Etymologies
- From Middle English pur, from Old French pur, from Latin purus ("clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain"), from Proto-Indo-European *peu-, *pu- (“to cleanse, purify”). Displaced native Middle English lutter ("pure, clear, sincere") (from Old English hlūtor, hluttor), Middle English skere ("pure, sheer, clear") (from Old English scǣre and Old Norse skǣr), Middle English schir ("clear, pure") (from Old English scīr), Middle English smete, smeate ("pure, refined") (from Old English smǣte; compare Old English mǣre ("pure")). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English pur, from Old French, from Latin pūrus; see peuə- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The most effective way to purify the thoughts is to divert them to a pure and strictly non-sexual subject -- e.g., _pure mathematics_.”
“When trustees and patrons realize that pure air is absolutely essential to health, and that their children are being slowly poisoned by the foul air of school rooms, then they will construct our halls of learning with a due regard for the laws of hygiene, and students will not droop under their tasks on account of the absence of Nature's most bountiful gift, _pure air_.”
“[Inamori Mika @ Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight] 1位 766票 ホロ＠狼と香辛料 [Horo @ Spice and Wolf] 2位 217票 咲野明日夏＠キミキス pure rouge [Sakino Asuka @ Kimikiss ~pure rouge] 3位 136票 乱崎月香＠狂乱家族日記 [Midarezaki Gekka @ Kyouran Kazoku Nikki]”
“In fact, I use the term "pure shooter" very carefully.”
“All the big brewers were blasting the word pure in their advertising, spending fortunes on two-page spreads so they could write the word in larger type than their competition.”
“The phrase "pure shooter" has always struck me as slightly damning, suggesting a player who can whip anyone's butt in H-O-R-S-E might not be a complete player, and, further, might not be the guy you want to have the ball in crunch time.”
“Mr. Cameron, returning to London on Tuesday after breaking off his summer vacation in Italy, condemned what he called "pure criminality.”
The Wall Street Journal: London Sweeps Up as Riots Simmer to North
“She had the second night of what she described as pure ectasy.”
“His peers love working with him because he's what they call a pure musician — someone who plays for the joy of it, not the money.”
“The council does say, however, it is unlikely that China will become what it calls a pure competitor of the United States military any time in the near future.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pure’.
-
PHIL - vocabulary of thinking
philosophy, Socratic, dialogue, philosopher, Athenian, philosophical, politic, Greek, method, death, ancient, believe and 243 more...
-
CULI - wine-tasting adjectives
In this area of expertise nouns are frequently used as adjectives (almond, bacon, cider, diesel, fennel, fresh-cut hay, wool) or new adjectives are formed (appley, berrylike, citrusy, full-bodied, ...
acetic, acidic, aged, angular, appley, astringent, attractive, austere, berrylike, big, bitter, brawny and 511 more...
-
RELI - words with Biblical connotations
Words in the Bible evoking biblical stories or with special spiritual meaning. Proper names have been reduced to the minimum.
ark, judgement, holy, saint, baptism, spirit, love, eternal, altar, balsam, covenant, flood and 1115 more...
-
Imbible Code ✞
Christian word branding; common English word-associatives connected to Bible terminology or scripture.
I also have a general Bible-word list.god, father, son, trinity, sacrament, knowledge, serpent, flood, evil, good, spirit, revelation and 118 more...
-
Fauvism
Words to describe art of the fauvist movement
wild, beast, color, fauve, fauvism, fauvist, avant garde, floating, violent, outrageous, radical, dynamite and 82 more...
-
Virgins
All and any to do with those precious hymenated...
sacrifice, altar, white, cherry, lily, pure, angelic, innocent, vestal, unicorn, undefiled, pristine and 8 more...
-
Neoclassicism
Words to describe Neoclassicism
democracy, sober, instructing, egalitarian, rational, thinker, balance, order, organized, idealistic, serious, intellectual and 36 more...
-
Words I loathe
can't, hate, skree, pomp, russel, moist, damned, pure, justified, saved, fulcrum, cooch and 11 more...
-
saddlechariot's list
words used to distort science and create a racialist environment.
prepotency, blood, breeding, pure, thoroughbred, breed, pedigree, sire, dam, saddlechariot
-
Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
-
Xuer's Words
real, xuer, china, shanghai, internet, readwrite, craigslist, google, delicious, flickr, douban, 37signals and 109 more...
-
Apples to Apples: Green Cards
A complete list of the green cards (adjectives) from the popular word game.
absurd, addictive, adorable, aged, American, ancient, animated, annoying, appetizing, arrogant, awesome, awkward and 237 more...
-
Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
-
Coruscatingly what?
List of adjectival terms, from aggressive to zippered, paired in printed materials with the adverb coruscatingly, identified by a simple query to Google Search (Books).
...propaedeutic...aggressive, angry, articulate, astringent, aware, beautiful, big, blinding, bright, brilliant, brutal, cerebral and 93 more...
-
Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pure.
grandpa27 That pound of pure strikes a note. In the 19th century London, book binders used dog turds to dress leather and referred to this dressing as pure. They bought it from poor folk who went around London collecting the turds by the bucket and sold the turds to the binders by the pound.
Fully discussed in Mayhew's London Labour & London Poor.
Nov 4, 2012
bilby Pure dog turds.
Arrggh. Earworm. Feb 3, 2010
chained_bear "'Be glad I'm not tanning hides,' she advised him. 'Ian says the Indian women use dog turds for that.'
'So do European tanners; they just call the stuff "pure."'
'Pure what?'
'Pure dog turds, I suppose,' he said with a shrug. 'How's it going?'"
—Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), 698 Feb 3, 2010
chained_bear See also pure-finder for a definition that WordNet does not include here. Oct 4, 2008