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Evil vs Downfall - What's the difference?

evil | downfall | Related terms |

Evil is a related term of downfall.


As nouns the difference between evil and downfall

is that evil is moral badness; wickedness; malevolence; the forces or behaviors that are the opposite or enemy of good while downfall is a precipitous decline in fortune; death or rapid deterioration, as in status or wealth.

As an adjective evil

is intending to harm; malevolent.

As a verb downfall is

to fall down; deteriorate; decline.

evil

English

Adjective

  • Intending to harm; malevolent.
  • Do you think that companies that engage in animal testing are evil ?
  • Morally corrupt.
  • an evil plot to kill innocent people
  • * Shakespeare
  • Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, / When death's approach is seen so terrible.
  • Unpleasant. (rfex)
  • Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous.
  • * Bible, Deuteronomy xxii. 19
  • He hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel.
  • * Shakespeare
  • The owl shrieked at thy birth — an evil sign.
  • * Milton
  • Evil news rides post, while good news baits.
  • (obsolete) Having harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious.
  • an evil''' beast; an '''evil''' plant; an '''evil crop
  • * Bible, Matthew vii. 18
  • A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.
  • (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.

    Synonyms

    * nefarious * malicious * malevolent * See also

    Antonyms

    * good

    Derived terms

    * evil eye * evil laugh * evil laughter * evilly * evil-minded * Evil One * evil twin * evilness

    Noun

    (wikipedia evil)
  • Moral badness; wickedness; malevolence; the forces or behaviors that are the opposite or enemy of good.
  • * Bible, (Ecclesiastes). ix. 3
  • The heart of the sons of men is full of evil .
  • * , chapter=16
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=The preposterous altruism too!
  • 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.
  • * (John Milton)
  • evils which our own misdeeds have wrought
  • * (William Shakespeare)
  • The evil that men do lives after them.
  • (obsolete) A malady or disease; especially in the phrase king's evil (scrofula).
  • * (Shakespeare)
  • * Addison
  • He [Edward the Confessor] was the first that touched for the evil .

    Antonyms

    * good

    Derived terms

    * axis of evil * evildoer * king's evil * lesser evil * necessary evil * poll evil

    Statistics

    *

    Anagrams

    *

    downfall

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A precipitous decline in fortune; death or rapid deterioration, as in status or wealth.
  • Many economic and political reasons led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2012 , date=May 13 , author=Alistair Magowan , title=Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=The Black Cats contributed to their own downfall for the only goal when Titus Bramble, making his first appearance since Boxing Day, and Michael Turner, let Phil Jones' cross bounce across the six-yard box as Rooney tucked in at the back post.}}
  • The cause of such a fall; a critical blow or error.
  • *
  • It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead.
  • An act of falling down.
  • * (Thomas Hardy), A Laodicean
  • Synonyms

    * (precipitous decline in fortune) fall * (death or rapid deterioration) doom

    Derived terms

    *

    Verb

  • To fall down; deteriorate; decline.
  • * 1977 , Mina P. Shaughnessy, Errors and expectations: a guide for the teacher of basic writing :
  • [...] wants to make civilization his subject, he will have a hard time proceeding with the sentence unless collapse is in his active vocabulary, for he cannot say "our civilization will downfall " or "fall down."
  • * 1998 , Peter Vink, Ernst A. P. Koningsveld, Steven Dhondt, Human factors in organizational design and management-VI :
  • Common belief has been that in the future the number of middle managers will downfall due to empowerment and team-building.
  • * 1998 , Lithuanian physics journal:
  • It should be noted that the magnitude of satellites decreases when tuning out of degeneracy, and in the wavelength range of 1.2-1.3 pm it downfalls to the value of 10-15% of the main spike magnitude.
  • * 2008 , Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra :
  • [...] As goodly air as ever From lunar orb downfell — Be it by hazard, Or supervened it by arrogancy?

    Derived terms

    * down-fallen, downfallen

    Anagrams

    *