| / English Dictionary |
PURITY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A woman's virtue or chastity
Synonyms:
honor; honour; pureness; purity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("purity" is a kind of...):
chastity; sexual morality; virtue (morality with respect to sexual relations)
Derivation:
pure (in a state of sexual virginity)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The state of being unsullied by sin or moral wrong; lacking a knowledge of evil
Synonyms:
innocence; pureness; purity; sinlessness; whiteness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("purity" is a kind of...):
condition; status (a state at a particular time)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "purity"):
cleanness (without moral defects)
Derivation:
pure ((used of persons or behaviors) having no faults; sinless)
purify (make pure or free from sin or guilt)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Being undiluted or unmixed with extraneous material
Synonyms:
pureness; purity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("purity" is a kind of...):
condition; status (a state at a particular time)
Attribute:
pure (free of extraneous elements of any kind)
impure (combined with extraneous elements)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "purity"):
plainness (the state of being unmixed with other material)
Antonym:
impurity (the condition of being impure)
Derivation:
pure (free of extraneous elements of any kind)
purify (remove impurities from, increase the concentration of, and separate through the process of distillation)
Context examples:
He held out his hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric point in the dark hollow of his hand.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Assured of the love of such a woman—the disinterested love, for Jane Fairfax's character vouches for her disinterestedness; every thing in his favour,—equality of situation—I mean, as far as regards society, and all the habits and manners that are important; equality in every point but one—and that one, since the purity of her heart is not to be doubted, such as must increase his felicity, for it will be his to bestow the only advantages she wants.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
He had known good and bad; but purity, as an attribute of existence, had never entered his mind.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
And it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Oh, that I could give any idea of the scene; of that sweet, sweet, good, good woman in all the radiant beauty of her youth and animation, with the red scar on her forehead, of which she was conscious, and which we saw with grinding of our teeth—remembering whence and how it came; her loving kindness against our grim hate; her tender faith against all our fears and doubting; and we, knowing that so far as symbols went, she with all her goodness and purity and faith, was outcast from God.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin, her tenderness of heart made her feel that she could not spare him, and the purity of her principles added yet a keener solicitude, when she considered how little useful, how little self-denying his life had (apparently) been.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into the passage.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Her purity smote him like a blow.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in her life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
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