Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or condition of being pure.
  • noun Freedom from spiritual or moral defilement; innocence or chastity.
  • noun The degree to which a color is free from being mixed with other colors.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun 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.
  • noun The condition or quality of being pure.
  • noun Cleanness; freedom from foulness or dirt: as, the purity of a garment.
  • noun Freedom from guilt or the defilement of sin; innocence: as, purity of heart or life.
  • noun Freedom from lust, or moral contamination by illicit sexual connection; chastity.
  • noun Freedom from sinister or improper views; sincerity: as, purity of motives or designs.
  • noun Freedom from foreign idioms, or from barbarous or improper words or phrases: as, purity of style or language.
  • noun Synonyms and Immaculateness, guilelessness, honesty, integrity, virtue, modesty.
  • noun 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.”

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun freedom from foreign admixture or deleterious matter.
  • noun Cleanness; freedom from foulness or dirt.
  • noun Freedom from guilt or the defilement of sin; innocence; chastity.
  • noun Freedom from any sinister or improper motives or views.
  • noun Freedom from foreign idioms, or from barbarous or improper words or phrases.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or degree of being pure.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a woman's virtue or chastity
  • noun being undiluted or unmixed with extraneous material
  • noun the state of being unsullied by sin or moral wrong; lacking a knowledge of evil

Etymologies

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