Definition of "evil" in English

adjective

1. Intending to harm; malevolent.

   • an evil plot to brainwash and even kill innocent people
   • 2006, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow, New York: Pantheon, Book Three, Section II, Chapter 3, p. 351, “Before this, I never had any cause to suspect my wife of any conspiracy.” “You mean it never crossed your mind that she might have been told to whisper evil thoughts in your ear at night?”

2. Morally corrupt.

   • If something is evil, it is never mandatory.
   • Do you think that companies that engage in animal testing are evil?

3. Unpleasant, foul (of odor, taste, mood, weather, etc.).

   • 1660, John Harding (translator), Paracelsus his Archidoxis, London: W.S., Book 7, “Of an Odoriferous Specifick,” p. 100, An Odoriferous Specifick […] is a Matter that takes away Diseases from the Sick, no otherwise then as Civet drives away the stinck of Ordure by its Odour; for you are to observe, That the Specifick doth permix it self with this evil Odour of the Dung; and the stink of the Dung cannot hurt, no[r] abide there […]
   • 1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London: Macmillan, Part V, “Mazar-i-Sherif,” p. 282, It was an evil day, sticky and leaden: Oxiana looked as colourless and suburban as India.

4. Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous.

5. (obsolete) Having harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious.

   • an evil beast; an evil plant; an evil crop

6. (computing, programming, slang) Undesirable; harmful; bad practice.

   • Global variables are evil; storing processing context in object member variables allows those objects to be reused in a much more flexible way.

noun

1. Moral badness; wickedness; malevolence; the forces or behaviors that are the opposite or enemy of good.

   • The evils of society include murder and theft.
   • Evil lacks spirituality, hence its need for mind control.

2. Something which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; something which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; harm; injury; mischief.

3. (obsolete) A malady or disease; especially in combination, as in king's evil, colt evil.

adverb

1. (obsolete) wickedly, evilly, iniquitously

2. (obsolete) injuriously, harmfully; in a damaging way.

3. (obsolete) badly, poorly; in an insufficient way.