Purify

How to spell purify

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce purify

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does purify mean?

1. verbTo remove dirt, contaminants or impurities from something so that it becomes clean.

Purify in a sentence

• The filter is designed to purify tap water before it reaches the kettle.

• Campers often boil river water to purify it before drinking.

Where does purify come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin purificare, which meant 'to make clean or pure', formed from purus, meaning 'pure, clean, unmixed', joined to a reduced form of facere, 'to make or do'. It travelled into English through Old French purifier during the 1300s, originally carrying strong religious and ceremonial overtones of cleansing from sin or impurity before it broadened to the plain physical sense of removing dirt or contaminants. The same purus root underlies the familiar words 'pure', 'purity' and 'puritan', so recognising that shared family helps fix the spelling. The ending -ify is the same productive suffix seen in 'clarify' and 'simplify', and it consistently turns into a single i before the f, which is the small spelling point worth remembering. By the time of early modern English the secular meaning of cleaning water, air or metal had become the dominant everyday use.

How the word is built

• pur- (from Latin purus: pure, clean)
• -ify (verb-forming suffix: to make or render)