nefarious

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nefārius (“offending against moral law, wicked”),^[2][3][4][5] with the English suffix -ous.^[2][4][6] The Latin adjective is formed from nefās (“an offence against divine or moral law, crime”),^[2][3][7] itself from ne- (“not”) and fās (“that which is right by divine or moral law”).^[2][7][5][8] Hoad notes that fās was divine law, as opposed to human law.^[8] The OED calls fās of uncertain origin,^[2] but Etymonline, Barnhart, Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Klein relate it to for (“to speak”),^{[3][4][9][10]} from Proto-Indo-European *bha- (“to speak, tell, say”).^[3] The negative particle is from Proto-Indo-European *ne- (“not”).^[3][5] The OED compares Middle French nephaire (“dreadful, horrible”) of the mid 16th century.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Wicked, villainous, despicable: 1567, in William Painter's Palace of Pleasure.^[2] The revised OED's date is much earlier than those of the other dictionaries: Barnhart gives 1604, in Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall,^[4] Etymonline about 1600,^[3] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged about 1609.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its Latin meaning of extreme wickedness.^[2][3] Johnson (1755) defined it as "wicked; abominable", quoting Ayliffe on the "most nefarious" bastards, those born of incest.^[11] The adverb nefariously is recorded from the late 16th century and the noun nefariousness from the early 18th.^[12]

Timeline

• 1567 – wicked, villainous, despicable.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Extremely wicked or villainous, especially in a criminal way: a nefarious plot to rig the election.^[9][13][2]

Word family

• nefariously
• nefariousness
• unnefarious

Related words

• fate
• fable
• fame
• infant

Usage notes

The 1906 first edition of the OED gave the pronunciation /nɪˈfɛərɪəs/; pronunciations with /ɑː/ in the second syllable are occasionally heard in British English from the late 20th century.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins