What is "evil"

Evil \E"vil\, adv. In an evil manner; not well; ill; badly; unhappily; injuriously; unkindly.
--Shak.

It went evil with his house.
--1 Chron. vii. 23.

The Egyptians evil entreated us, and affected us.
--Deut. xxvi. 6.

Evil \E*vil\ ([=e]"v'l) a. [OE. evel, evil, ifel, uvel, AS. yfel; akin to OFries, evel, D. euvel, OS. & OHG. ubil, G.

1. Having qualities tending to injury and mischief; having a nature or properties which tend to badness; mischievous; not good; worthless or deleterious; poor; as, an evil beast; and evil plant; an evil crop.

   A good tree can not bring forth evil fruit.
   --Matt. vii. 18.

2. Having or exhibiting bad moral qualities; morally corrupt; wicked; wrong; vicious; as, evil conduct, thoughts, heart, words, and the like.

   Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, When death's approach is seen so terrible.
   --Shak.

3. Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous; as, evil tidings; evil arrows; evil days.

   Because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel.
   --Deut. xxii. 19.

   The owl shrieked at thy birth -- an evil sign.
   --Shak.

   Evil news rides post, while good news baits.
   --Milton.

   Evil eye, an eye which inflicts injury by some magical or fascinating influence. It is still believed by the ignorant and superstitious that some persons have the supernatural power of injuring by a look.

   It almost led him to believe in the evil eye.
   --J. H. Newman.

   Evil speaking, speaking ill of others; calumny; censoriousness.

   The evil one, the Devil; Satan.

   Note: Evil is sometimes written as the first part of a compound (with or without a hyphen). In many cases the compounding need not be insisted on. Examples: Evil doer or evildoer, evil speaking or evil-speaking, evil worker, evil wishing, evil-hearted, evil-minded.

   Syn: Mischieveous; pernicious; injurious; hurtful; destructive; wicked; sinful; bad; corrupt; perverse; wrong; vicious; calamitous.

Evil \E"vil\ ([=e]"v'l) n.

1. Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.

   Evils which our own misdeeds have wrought.
   --Milton.

   The evil that men do lives after them.
   --Shak.

2. Moral badness, or the deviation of a moral being from the principles of virtue imposed by conscience, or by the will of the Supreme Being, or by the principles of a lawful human authority; disposition to do wrong; moral offence; wickedness; depravity.

   The heart of the sons of men is full of evil.
   --Eccl. ix.

3. 3. malady or disease; especially in the phrase king's evil, the scrofula. [R.]
   --Shak.

   He [Edward the Confessor] was the first that touched for the evil.
   --Addison.

Old English yfel (Kentish evel) "bad, vicious, ill, wicked," from Proto-Germanic *ubilaz (cognates: Old Saxon ubil, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch evel, Dutch euvel, Old High German ubil, German übel, Gothic ubils), from PIE *upelo-, from root *wap- "bad, evil" (cognates: Hittite huwapp- "evil").\n

\nIn Old English and other older Germanic languages other than Scandinavian, "this word is the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement" [OED]. Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use bad, cruel, unskillful, defective (adj.), or harm (n.), crime, misfortune, disease (n.). In Middle English, bad took the wider range of senses and evil began to focus on moral badness. Both words have good as their opposite. Evil-favored (1520s) meant "ugly." Evilchild is attested as an English surname from 13c.\n

\nThe adverb is Old English yfele, originally of words or speech. Also as a noun in Old English, "what is bad; sin, wickedness; anything that causes injury, morally or physically." Especially of a malady or disease from c.1200. The meaning "extreme moral wickedness" was one of the senses of the Old English noun, but it did not become established as the main sense of the modern word until 18c. As a noun, Middle English also had evilty. Related: Evilly. Evil eye (Latin oculus malus) was Old English eage yfel. The jocular notion of an evil twin as an excuse for regrettable deeds is by 1986, American English, from an old motif in mythology.

Old English yfel (see evil (adj.)).

a. 1 intend to harm; malevolent. 2 morally corrupt. 3 Unpleasant. (rfex) 4 Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous. 5 (context obsolete English) Having harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious. 6 (context computing programming slang English) undesirable; harmful; bad practice n. Moral badness; wickedness; malevolence; the forces or behaviors that are the opposite or enemy of good.

1. adj. morally bad or wrong; "evil purposes"; "an evil influence"; "evil deeds" [syn: wicked] [ant: good]

2. having the nature of vice [syn: depraved, vicious]

3. tending to cause great harm [syn: harmful, injurious]

4. having or exerting a malignant influence; "malevolent stars"; "a malefic force" [syn: malefic, malevolent, malign]

1. n. morally objectionable behavior [syn: immorality, wickedness, iniquity]

2. that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune; "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones"- Shakespeare

3. the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice; "attempts to explain the origin of evil in the world" [syn: evilness] [ant: good, good]

"Evil" is a song by American rock band Interpol. It was released as the second single from their second studio album, Antics, on January 3, 2005. The song is believed to be about Rosemary West, a serial killer who raped and murdered teenage girls with her husband Fred West. "Evil" peaked at number 18 on the UK Singles Chart and number 24 on Billboard magazine's Modern Rock Tracks chart. In Australia, the song was ranked number 76 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2004.

Evil is a 2003 Swedish drama film directed by Mikael Håfström, based on Jan Guillou's semi-autobiographical novel with the same name from 1981, and starring Andreas Wilson, Henrik Lundström and Gustaf Skarsgård. The film is set in a private boarding school in the 1950s with institutional violence as its theme.

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards. It won three Swedish Guldbagge Awards including Best Film.

Evil is the absence or opposite of good.

Evil may also refer to:

Ondskan ("The Evil") is a Swedish novel by Jan Guillou.

"Evil" is the third single from the album Light & Magic by the electronic music group Ladytron. It was released in 2003 and reached a position of #44 on the UK Singles Chart.

Evil, also known as Το Κακό in Greek, is 2005 Greek zombie horror film. The film is notable for being the first Greek zombie movie.

"Evil", sometimes listed as "Evil (Is Going On)", is a Chicago blues standard written by Willie Dixon. Howlin' Wolf recorded the song for Chess Records in 1954. It was included on the 1959 compilation album Moanin' in the Moonlight. When he re-recorded it for The Howlin' Wolf Album in 1969, "Evil" became Wolf's last charting single (#43 Billboard R&B chart).

The 1954 song features sidemen Hubert Sumlin and Jody Williams (guitars), Otis Spann (piano), Willie Dixon (double-bass), and Earl Phillips (drums). Wolf achieves a coarse, emotional performance with his strained singing, lapsing into falsetto. The song, a twelve-bar blues, is punctuated with a syncopated backbeat, brief instrumental improvisations, upper-end piano figures, and intermittent blues harp provided by Wolf. The lyrics caution about the "evil" that takes place in a man's home when he is away, concluding with "you better watch your happy home".

The song has been recorded by numerous artists, including: Luther Allison, Canned Heat, Captain Beefheart, Derek and the Dominos, Gary Moore, Cactus, The Faces, Dee Snider (with Widowmaker), Jake E. Lee, Monster Magnet, and Steve Miller. Koko Taylor's version of the song appeared in the 1987 film Adventures in Babysitting. Tom Jones recorded a version of the song in 2011, produced by Jack White. It includes a snippet of The Doors' "Wild Child". Jace Everett and C. C. Adcock also recorded a version, which was used as the featured song for the third season finale of the HBO series True Blood.

"Evil" is a song by R&B band Earth, Wind & Fire which was written by Philip Bailey and Maurice White. It was released in 1973 as a single and included on the band's 1973 album, Head to the Sky. It's a rework of "Bad Tune", a song originally recorded in their debut album Earth, Wind & Fire as an instrumental.

"Evil" peaked at numbers 50 and 25 on the Billboard Pop and Black Singles charts respectively. It also peaked at #19 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart.

"Evil" (often stylised as EVIL) is a song by alternative rock band Grinderman, written collectively by Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos. The song was featured as the fifth track on the band's second and final studio album, Grinderman 2 (2010). On Record Store Day 2011, "Evil" was released as a limited edition single, on 12" vinyl with an enclosed CD, with various remixes.

Evil was a garage rock band from Miami, Florida, active between late 1965 and early 1967. They were known for a hard–driving, sometimes, thrashing 60s punk sound that combined elements of blues, rockabilly, and British invasion influences (particularly the tougher sounding London-based outfits of the time, such as The Yardbirds, The Who, The Pretty Things, and The Small Faces). They recorded several songs, amongst which “Always Runnin' Around” and “Whatcha Gonna Do” were released as a single on Living Legend Records in 1966. The band would eventually be signed to Capitol Records, but broke up shortly thereafter. In more recent years they have become particularly noted for several previously unreleased songs recorded in 1966, which have been released in recent years on various independent labels from acetates, such as "From a Curbstone," "Short Life," and especially "I'm Movin' On," which is now regarded as a garage classic.

The band was formed in 1965 by Stan Kinchen, who would play lead guitar on most of their recordings. one night that year, after dance, Al Banyai, the band's rhythm guitarist asked John Doyle to join as lead singer. Doyle would come up with the name of the band: "We were looking for something dark and scary. We were all into Edgar Allan Poe, almost named the band that, then Raven, then just EVIL! The story is that we named it after the blues tune..." Later in 1965, Larry O' Connell, on bass, and Doug Romanella, on drums would be added to the lineup. In March of 1966, after winning WFUN's annual Dade County Youth Fair Battle Of The Bands, the band were awarded a chance to make several recordings in a one-day marathon session at the Dukoff recording studio in Miami, where they cut several demos and acetates. Amongst the self-penned songs recorded there were "I'm Movin' On," "From a Curbstone," "Short Life," and Always Runnin' Around.

Later that year Al Banyai, Larry O'Connell, and Doug Romanella departed and were replaced by John Dalton (rhythm guitar), Mike Hughes (bass), and Jeff Allen (drums). Their new drummer, Jeff Allen, joined after the breakup of his former group, another Miami band, The Montells. He would occasionally travel to England, where he was able to go to clubs and witness, firsthand, many of the latest British bands playing live and would then bring his observations back home to share with fellow band members. Near the end of 1966, they would record again in Miami, this time at Criteria Studios, with their version of the Small Faces' "Whacha Gonna Do." “Always Runnin' Around” and “Whatcha Gonna Do” were released as a single on Living Legend Records in late 1966. By the end of the year they signed to Capitol Records, who re-released the same single on their own label, with the band's name mistakenly printed as "The Evil." However, shortly afterward, in 1967, the band broke up.

In 2010, Jeff Allen, second drummer for Evil (and earlier with the Montells) died. On February 14, 2014, former lead singer, John Doyle, passed.