evil

Evil means deeply and deliberately morally bad — the villain of a story, an evil regime, an evil thing to do. It is the strongest moral word in ordinary English and it is not used lightly.

That strength is the thing to notice. Bad covers everything from a film to a crime; evil claims something about the will behind the act, and to call a person evil is to say they meant it and knew. It is common in religion, in fiction and in headlines, and rare in careful discussion of real people, where cruel or wicked are used instead. As a noun, evil means wrongdoing in general — good and evil — and a necessary evil is something bad you accept because the alternative is worse.

Phrases it lives in

• a necessary evil — something bad that is accepted because the alternative is worse