Evil

How to spell evil

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce evil

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does evil mean?

1. adjectiveProfoundly immoral, wicked, or causing deliberate harm.
2. nounA force or instance of profound wickedness or harm.

Evil in a sentence

• adjective

  The novel's evil villain poisons an entire village for profit.

• noun

  The charity exists to fight poverty and the evil of human trafficking.

• adjective

  The film portrays its main antagonist as thoroughly evil.

• noun

  Many philosophers have debated the problem of evil in the world.

Where does evil come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Evil comes straight from the Old English yfel, which meant 'bad', 'wicked', or 'harmful', and it is one of the oldest words in the language. It belongs to a wider Germanic family that includes the Dutch euvel and the German Übel, both still meaning something bad or an ailment. Scholars think the underlying sense was something like 'exceeding proper limits' or 'going too far', which slid naturally into the idea of moral badness. In early English it covered a huge range of unpleasantness, from a nasty illness to outright wickedness, before narrowing toward the strong moral sense we use today. The modern spelling keeps the single 'l' of the old form, which is the small trap, since the ending sounds like the schwa '-ul' that often tempts writers toward an extra letter or a different vowel.

How the word is built

• evil (from Old English yfel: bad, wicked); a single native root with no prefix or suffix