pure

comparative purer · comparative more pure · superlative purest · superlative most pure

1. Free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied.

   Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient or modern history records.

   1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter VII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC

   Synonyms: pristine, untouched, virgin · Antonyms: dirty, flawed, impure, imperfect, impure, tainted

2. Free of foreign material or pollutants.

   A guinea is pure gold if it has in it no alloy.

   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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1837, Leitch Ritchie, Ireland Picturesque and Romantic, volume 1, page 225

   "Hetch Hetchy water is the purest, wholly unpolluted, and forever unpollutable."

   1908 January 4, John Muir, “The Hetch Hetchy Valley”, in Sierra Club Bulletin, volume VI, number 4

   Synonyms: crude, natural, unrefined, raw, coarse, crude, natural, pristine · Antonyms: contaminated, impure, adulterated, common, contaminated, corrupted, mixed, polluted

3. Free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean.

   Laye hondes sodenly on no man nether be part taker of wother mens synnes. Kepe thy silfe pure.

   1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, 1 Timothy v:[22], folio cclxxviij, recto

   Synonyms: innocent, chaste, blameless, clean, clean-handed, clean as a hound's tooth, clean as a whistle, clear · Antonyms: corrupt, guilty, sinful, at fault, blameworthy, censurable, culpable, guilty

4. Mere; that and that only.

   That idea is pure madness!

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   There can be few tautologies purer than the phrase "antisocial motoring". Nothing could be more antisocial than locking oneself into a steel box before hurtling down a Tarmac scar, cleaving urban and rural communities or unspoiled natural havens, past children held tight in the fearful grip of nervous parents while you fart toxic fumes in their general direction.

   2013 June 5, Ally Fogg, “How can you make driving more antisocial than it already is?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 18 Mar 2017

   Synonyms: alone, bare, only, simple, very

5. Done for its own sake instead of serving another branch of science.

   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.

   2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892

   Antonyms: applied

6. human sciencesOf a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
7. Without harmonics or overtones; not harsh or discordant.
8. computingHaving no side effects.

   a pure method

9. slangBermudaA lot of.

   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...

   2013 April 12, “Exclusive: Meet Derpuntae - Bermuda's first meme”, in The Bermuda Sun, archived from the original on 12 Dec 2022

1. Scotlandnot comparableLiverpoolto a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.

   You’re pure busy.

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   I just get pure shy with the interview cats.

   1996, Trainspotting (film)

present singular third person pures · participle present puring · participle past pured · past pured

1. golfTo hit (the ball) completely cleanly and accurately.

   Tiger Woods pured his first drive straight down the middle of the fairway.

2. obsoletetransitiveTo cleanse; to refine.

plural pures

1. countableuncountableOne who, or that which, is pure.

   Took a drop of the pure, to keep my spirits from sinking, […]

   c. 1870, D. K. Gavan, Rocky Road to Dublin

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   ... 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.

   1845, The Lancet, page 187

   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 […]

   1998, Christopher Leigh Connery, The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 30

1. alternativeuncountableAlternative form of puer (“dung (e.g. of dogs)”).

   […] Dogs'-dung is called ‘Pure’, from its cleansing and purifying properties.

   1851, H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London poor, vII. 142/1

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   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.

   2001, Wendy Lawton, chapter 8, in The Tinker's Daughter

   […] surely there was something better for him than chasing the pure (footnote: A term, technically speaking, for dog muck, much prized by the tanneries.) […]

   2013, Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam, page 28