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  1. pure love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Having a homogeneous or uniform composition; not mixed: pure oxygen.
  2. adj. Free from adulterants or impurities: pure chocolate.
  3. adj. Free of dirt, defilement, or pollution: "A memory without blot or contamination must be . . . an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment” ( Charlotte Brontë).
  4. adj. Free of foreign elements.
  5. adj. Containing nothing inappropriate or extraneous: a pure literary style.
  6. adj. Complete; utter: pure folly.
  7. adj. Having no faults; sinless: "I felt pure and sweet as a new baby” ( Sylvia Plath).
  8. adj. Chaste; virgin.
  9. adj. Of unmixed blood or ancestry.
  10. adj. Genetics Produced by self-fertilization or continual inbreeding; homozygous: a pure line.
  11. adj. Music Free from discordant qualities: pure tones.
  12. adj. Linguistics Articulated with a single unchanging speech sound; monophthongal: a pure vowel.
  13. adj. Theoretical: pure science.
  14. adj. Philosophy Free of empirical elements: pure reason.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. 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.
  2. Bare; mere; sheer; absolute; very: as, it was done out of pure spite; a pure villain.
  3. Sole; only.
  4. Whole; thorough; complete.
  5. Fine; nice.
  6. Figuratively, free from mixture with things of another kind; homogeneous.
  7. Free from mixture with that which contaminates, stains, defiles, or blemishes. Free from moral defilement or guilt; innocent; guileless; spotless; chaste: applied to persons.
  8. Ritually or ceremonially clean; unpolluted.
  9. Free from that which vitiates, pollutes, or degrades; unadulterated; genuine; stainless; sincere: said of thoughts, actions, motives, etc.
  10. In music: Of intervals, intonation, and harmony, mathematically correct or perfect: opposed to tempered.
  11. Of tones, without discordant quality.
  12. Of style of composition or of a particular work, correct; regular; finished.
  13. In metaphysics, of the nature of form; unmateriate; in the Kantian terminology, not depending on experience; non-sensuous.
  14. Logic based solely on a priori principles; a canon of the understanding and of the reason in reference to the formal element.
  15. Synonyms Uncorrupted, incorrupt, unsullied, untainted, untarnished, unstained, clean, fair, unspotted, unpolluted, undefiled, immaculate, guiltless, holy.
  16. n. Purity.
  17. 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.
  18. Quite; very; absolutely; perfectly.
  19. To purify; cleanse; refine.
  20. Specifically In tanning, to cleanse with a bate of dog's dung.
  21. In biology, having germ-cells of only one kind and like those of a parent. See the extract.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied.
  2. adj. free of foreign material or pollutants
  3. adj. free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean
  4. adj. of a branch of science, done for its own sake instead of serving another branch of science.
  5. adj. phonetics Of a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
  6. adv. Liverpudlian to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Separate from all heterogeneous or extraneous matter; free from mixture or combination; clean; mere; simple; unmixed.
  2. adj. Free from moral defilement or quilt; hence, innocent; guileless; chaste; -- applied to persons.
  3. adj. Free from that which harms, vitiates, weakens, or pollutes; genuine; real; perfect; -- applied to things and actions.
  4. adj. (Script.) Ritually clean; fitted for holy services.
  5. adj. (Phonetics) Of a single, simple sound or tone; -- said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. (of color) being chromatically pure; not diluted with white or grey or black
  2. adj. free from discordant qualities
  3. adj. concerned with theory and data rather than practice; opposed to applied
  4. adj. in a state of sexual virginity
  5. adj. free of extraneous elements of any kind
  6. adj. (used of persons or behaviors) having no faults; sinless.
  7. adj. without qualification; used informally as (often pejorative) intensifiers

Etymologies

  1. 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)
  2. 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

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Lists

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  • 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

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‘pure’ has been looked up 4646 times, loved by 8 people, added to 48 lists, commented on 4 times, and has a Scrabble score of 6.