pure

Etymology 1

From Middle English pure, pur, from Old French pur, from Latin pūrus (“clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewH- (“to cleanse, purify”). Displaced native Middle English lutter (“pure, clear, sincere”) (from Old English hlūtor, hluttor), Middle English skere (“pure, sheer, clear”) (from Old English scǣre and Old Norse skǣr), Middle English schir (“clear, pure”) (from Old English scīr), Middle English smete, smeate (“pure, refined”) (from Old English smǣte; compare Old English mǣre (“pure”)).

adj

1. Free of flaws or imperfections; unsullied.
2. Free of foreign material or pollutants.
3. Free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean.
   c. 1530, William Tyndale (translator), Bible, 1 Timothy, 5:22, Laye hondes sodely on no man nether be partaker of other mes synnes: kepe thy silfe pure.
4. Mere; that and that only.
   That idea is pure madness!
5. (of a branch of science) 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   The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason.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. 2014-06-21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892
6. (phonetics) Of a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
7. (of sound) Without harmonics or overtones; not harsh or discordant.
8. (Bermuda, slang) A 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... 2013-04-12, “Exclusive: Meet Derpuntae - Bermuda's first meme”, in The Bermuda Sun, archived from the original on 2022-12-12

adv

1. (Liverpool, Scotland) to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.
   You’re pure busy.
   I just get pure shy with the interview cats. 1996, Trainspotting (film)

verb

1. (golf) to hit (the ball) completely cleanly and accurately
   Tiger Woods pured his first drive straight down the middle of the fairway.
2. (transitive, obsolete) To cleanse; to refine.

noun

1. One who, or that which, is pure.
   ... 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
   Took a drop of the pure, to keep my spirits from sinking, […] c. 1870, D. K. Gavan, Rocky Road to Dublin
   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, page 30

Etymology 2

noun

1. Alternative 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
   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