pure

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See also: puré, purè, purê, and püré

English

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Etymology 1

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From Middle English pure, pur, from Old French pur, from Latin pūrus (“clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewH- (“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”)).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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pure (comparative purer or more pure, superlative purest or most pure)

  1. Free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied.
  3. Free of foreign material or pollutants.
    • 1725, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, […], 2nd edition, London: […] John Clark and Richard Hett, […], Emanuel Matthews, […], and Richard Ford, […], published 1726, →OCLC:
      A guinea is pure gold if it has in it no alloy.
    • 1837, Leitch Ritchie, Ireland Picturesque and Romantic, volume 1, page 225:
      As for the rest, the air here is said to be purer than elsewhere in Ireland; the water of the Nore is beautifully transparent; and the bogless state of the land helps out the rhyme.
    • 1908 January 4, John Muir, “The Hetch Hetchy Valley”, in Sierra Club Bulletin‎[1], volume VI, number 4:
      "Hetch Hetchy water is the purest, wholly unpolluted, and forever unpollutable."
  4. Free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean.
  5. Mere; that and that only.
    That idea is pure madness!
  6. (of a branch of science) Done for its own sake instead of serving another branch of science.
    • 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:
      The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.
  7. (phonetics) Of a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
  8. (of sound) Without harmonics or overtones; not harsh or discordant.
  9. (Bermuda, slang) A lot of.
    • 2013 April 12, “Exclusive: Meet Derpuntae - Bermuda's first meme”, in The Bermuda Sun‎[2], archived from the original on 2022-12-12:
      Well when ah's youngah, ah'd just light a candle rahn de dinna table play pure crazy 8s and spades vif my brotha til we lot dozed off...
Synonyms
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Antonyms
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Derived terms
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Descendants
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  • → Welsh: piwr
Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Adverb

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pure (not comparable)

  1. (Liverpool, Scotland) to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.
    You’re pure busy.
    • 1996, Trainspotting (film)
      I just get pure shy with the interview cats.
Translations
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Verb

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pure (third-person singular simple present pures, present participle puring, simple past and past participle pured)

  1. (golf) To hit (the ball) completely cleanly and accurately.
    Tiger Woods pured his first drive straight down the middle of the fairway.
  2. (transitive, obsolete) To cleanse; to refine.

Noun

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pure (countable and uncountable, plural pures)

  1. One who, or that which, is pure.
    • 1845, The Lancet, page 187:
      ... the establishment of an inferior College, and the consequent connexion of the many thousands of British practitioners in medicine and surgery with a subordinate institution, and one that should be subservient to the government of the pures.
    • c. 1870, D. K. Gavan, Rocky Road to Dublin:
      Took a drop of the pure, to keep my spirits from sinking, […]
    • 1998, Christopher Leigh Connery, The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 30:
      All interpretive frames will impose their categories on the object of historical analysis, and I am not proposing that this narrative of the "pures"; be rejected in favor of some phantasmatic framework that claims to derive more purely from the sources themselves. I will show in chapter 3 that, since the "pures" possibly did not even exist […]

Etymology 2

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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pure (uncountable)

  1. Alternative form of puer (“dung (e.g. of dogs)”)
    • 1851, H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London poor, vII. 142/1:
      […] Dogs'-dung is called ‘Pure’, from its cleansing and purifying properties.
    • 2001, Wendy Lawton, chapter 8, in The Tinker's Daughter:
      Mary smelled the rancid odor of the tannery on the right side of the road. […]
      "What is that, Mary?" Jake asked.
      "'Tis a bag for collecting pure. That is going to be your job, Jake. You are to collect pure."
      "Pure? What is pure?"
      "Pure is another word for dung," Mary answered.
    • 2013, Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam, page 28:
      […] surely there was something better for him than chasing the pure (footnote: A term, technically speaking, for dog muck, much prized by the tanneries.) […]

Further reading

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Anagrams

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Danish

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Etymology 1

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From Latin pūre, the adverb of pūrus (“clean, pure”); or the definite form of pur (“pure”).

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /puːrə/, [ˈpʰuːɐ̯]

Adjective

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pure

  1. complete
  2. (adverbial) completely
Inflection
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Inflection of pure
Positive Comparative Superlative
Indefinte common singular pure — —2
Indefinite neuter singular pure — —2
Plural pure — —2
Definite attributive1 pure — —
1) When an adjective is applied predicatively to something definite, the corresponding "indefinite" form is used.
2) The "indefinite" superlatives may not be used attributively.

Etymology 2

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From French purée (“puree”).

Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /pyre/, [pʰyˈʁæ]

Noun

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pure c (singular definite pureen, plural indefinite pureer)

  1. puree
Inflection
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Declension of pure
common
gender 		Singular Plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative pure pureen pureer pureerne
genitive pures pureens pureers pureernes

Etymology 3

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See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /puːrə/, [ˈpʰuːɐ̯]

Adjective

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pure

  1. definite of pur
  2. plural of pur

Esperanto

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Adverb

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pure

  1. purely

Finnish

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Verb

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pure

  1. inflection of purra:
    1. indicative present connegative
    2. second-person singular imperative present/present connegative

Anagrams

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French

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Pronunciation

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Adjective

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pure

  1. feminine singular of pur

Anagrams

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German

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Pronunciation

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Adjective

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pure

  1. inflection of pur:
    1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
    2. strong nominative/accusative plural
    3. weak nominative all-gender singular
    4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Italian

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Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈpu.re/
  • Rhymes: -ure
  • Hyphenation: pù‧re

Etymology 1

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Adjective

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pure

  1. feminine plural of puro

Etymology 2

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From Latin pūrē, the adverb of pūrus.[1]

Adverb

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pure

  1. too, also, as well
    Synonym: anche
  2. well, surely
  3. please, by all means
  4. if you like; if you want (etc.)
    Parli pure (with third-person subjunctive) ― let him speak if he likes
    Parla pure (with imperative) ― Speak if you like
    Lei parli pure (with formal subjunctive-imperative) ― Speak if you like

Conjunction

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pure

  1. even though, even if, although
  2. nevertheless

References

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  1. ^ Angelo Prati, "Vocabolario Etimologico Italiano", Torino, 1951; headword pure

Anagrams

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Latin

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Etymology 1

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From pūrus (“clean; pure”) and -e (“-ly, -ily”).

Adverb

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pūrē (comparative pūrius, superlative pūrissimē)

  1. clearly, brightly, cleanly
  2. correctly, faultlessly, perfectly, purely
    loqui pure
    to speak correctly
Synonyms
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Etymology 2

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Noun

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pūre

  1. ablative singular of pūs

References

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  • “pure”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “pure”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎[3], London: Macmillan and Co.
    • (ambiguous) logic, dialectic: dialectica (-ae or -orum) (pure Latin disserendi ratio et scientia)
    • (ambiguous) astronomy: astrologia (pure Latin sidera, caelestia)

Anagrams

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Middle English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Old French pur, from Latin pūrus.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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pure (comparative purer, superlative purest)

  1. pure, unadulterated, undiluted, untarnished
  2. entire, total, all
  3. perfect, wonderful, unflawed
  4. morally clean, pure, or upstanding
  5. chaste
  6. true, real, genuine, not counterfeit
  7. clear, obvious, simple

Descendants

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References

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Norwegian Bokmål

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Noun

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pure m (definite singular pureen, indefinite plural pureer, definite plural pureene)

  1. alternative spelling of puré

Norwegian Nynorsk

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Etymology 1

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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pure m (definite singular pureen, indefinite plural purear, definite plural pureane)

  1. alternative spelling of puré

Etymology 2

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Pronunciation

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Adjective

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pure

  1. definite singular of pur
  2. plural of pur

Rapa Nui

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Etymology

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From Proto-Polynesian *pule.

Noun

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pure

  1. cowrie

Scots

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Adjective

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pure (comparative mair pure, superlative maist pure)

  1. completely, utterly
    The auld man wis pure ragin!
    The old man was absolutely furious!

Swahili

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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pure (n class, plural pure)

  1. githeri (traditional Kenyan meal of maize and beans mixed and boiled together)
    Synonym: kande

Swedish

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Adjective

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pure

  1. definite natural masculine singular of pur

Anagrams

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