Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The quality or condition of being pure.
- n. A quantitative assessment of homogeneity or uniformity.
- n. Freedom from sin or guilt; innocence; chastity: "Teach your children . . . the belief in purity of body, mind and soul” ( Emmeline Pankhurst).
- n. The absence in speech or writing of slang or other elements deemed inappropriate to good style.
- n. The degree to which a color is free from being mixed with other colors.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The condition or quality of being pure. Freedom from foreign admixture of heterogeneous matter: as, the purity of water, of wine, of spirit; the purity of drugs; the purity of metals.
- n. Cleanness; freedom from foulness or dirt: as, the purity of a garment.
- n. Freedom from guilt or the defilement of sin; innocence: as, purity of heart or life.
- n. Freedom from lust, or moral contamination by illicit sexual connection; chastity.
- n. Freedom from sinister or improper views; sincerity: as, purity of motives or designs.
- n. Freedom from foreign idioms, or from barbarous or improper words or phrases: as, purity of style or language.
- n. Synonyms and Immaculateness, guilelessness, honesty, integrity, virtue, modesty.
- n. Purity, Propriety, Precision. As a quality of style, “Purity … relates to three things, viz. the form of words [etymology], the construction of words in continuous discourse [syntax], and the meaning of words and phrases [lexicography].” (A. Phelps, Eng. Style, p. 9.) “Propriety … relates to the signification of language as fixed by usage.” (A. Phelps, Eng. Style, p. 79.) “The offences against the usage of the English language are … improprieties, words or phrases used in a sense not English.” (A. S. Hill, Rhet., p. 19.) “An author's diction is pure when he uses such words only as belong to the idiom of the language, in opposition to words that are foreign, obsolete, newly coined, or without proper authority. … A violation of purity is called a barbarism. … But another question arises. … Is the word used correctly in the sentence in which it occurs? … A writer who fails in this respect offends against propriety.” (J. S. Hart, Comp. and Rhet., pp. 68, 74.) “Precision includes all that is essential to the expression of no more, no less, and no other than the meaning which the writer purposes to express.”
- n. In biology, the state or condition, with respect to reproduction, of an organism that is developed from a fertilized egg formed by the union of two identical germ-cells.
Wiktionary
- n. The state or degree of being pure.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. freedom from foreign admixture or deleterious matter.
- n. Cleanness; freedom from foulness or dirt.
- n. Freedom from guilt or the defilement of sin; innocence; chastity.
- n. Freedom from any sinister or improper motives or views.
- n. Freedom from foreign idioms, or from barbarous or improper words or phrases.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a woman's virtue or chastity
- n. being undiluted or unmixed with extraneous material
- n. the state of being unsullied by sin or moral wrong; lacking a knowledge of evil
Examples
“About the year 1639, the New-English reformers, considering that their churches enjoyed the other ordinances of Heaven in their scriptural purity were willing that the 'The singing of Psalms' should be restored among them unto a share of that _purity_.”
“Leave aside for a moment the critics who recoil at the symbols, the patriarchy, the very use of the term purity, with its shadow of stains and stigma.”
“This is an additional moral dimension, which he calls purity/sanctity.”
“But I said, 'Do you know so precisely that the good God cares anything for what you call purity, Ole Jensen?”
“Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which they called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their religions.”
The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature
“What a great name "purity" is for the Republican Party.”
“However, the same longing for perfection, the same drive for physical "purity," is hardly an appalling idea today.”
“What they lack in purity they gain in their ability to bring blue states to the GOP table.”
Can we start treating Chuckie Schumer (D-NY) as vulnerable NOW? | RedState
“Yes, I know the Internet is a jungle, but as the writer above puts it, life continues to be a "ceaseless struggle to extract moments of goodness and purity from a world of tragedy.”
“When somebody makes a piece of music, and they aim for a target and hit it, that purity is lost on a lot people, because what it may communicate to future generations is the love for money or the desire for fame.”
Lessons for life from Greg Kot’s book on Wilco « One Size Fits One
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘purity’.
-
breeze debris
autodidact, hollographic, neurotheology, pensive, grapple, nondual, integral, phantasmagoria, burnished, capacious, ginger, astral and 120 more...
-
tragedy of the commons
insomnia, arabesque, carousal, lucifer, riot, submerge, initiate, indigo, existence, magenta, opus, sleeplessness and 145 more...
-
Felix's list
-
The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
-
Evin290's Words
puerile, fastidious, blatherskite, folderol, femtosecond, redox, incarnadine, cerulean, genuflection, muslin, multitudinous, miasma and 517 more...
-
unqualified's Words
crisp, insightful, perspicacious, perceptive, clear, readiness, sentience, kinesthesia, sentient, kinesthetic, ambrosia, clairvoyant and 17 more...
-
intriguedBayou's Words
azure, cadence, rapscalion, excelsior, onomatopoeia, pounce, trepidation, coloda, benign, malevolent, wisp, homage and 48 more...
-
Meanings, value or even existence are...
love, god, truth, real, authentic, culture, purity, race, ethnicity, safe, alone, value and 4 more...
-
favourite English words
ethereal, transparent, opalescent, purity, divine, aureate, daydream, enchanted, mystery, calmness, equality
-
madamebovary's Words
splendid, epistemic, archaic, anachronistic, misanthrope, cyclic, didactic, encrusted, archetypal, symbiotic, recitatif, viviparous and 55 more...
-
witt0n's Words
perfunctory, malediction, tumor, strumpet, trollop, harlot, lip gloss, circumlocution, deacclimation, remand, cohesion, retroactive and 8 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for purity.

Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.