purify

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English purifien,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French purifier (“to purify, cleanse, refine”),^{[5][2][3][4][6]} from Latin pūrificō (“to make pure, cleanse”).^[5][6][4][7] The OED also names Anglo-Norman and Middle French as the source, and records the French verb from about 1175, first of moral purity.^[6] In Anglo-Norman it is recorded from the late 13th century, already meaning both to free from impurities and to church a woman after childbirth.^[8] The Latin verb is formed from pūrus (“pure”), the source of pure, and -ficō, from faciō (“to make”);^[5][4][7][9] Barnhart supposes a lost adjective *pūrificus between them.^[2][10] Etymonline traces the verb for “make” to Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to set, put”).^[5] In post-classical Latin the verb also meant to cleanse from sin, as in the Vulgate, and to church a woman after childbirth.^[6] It is the source of purificar, purificar, purificar and purificare.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

To make ritually pure; also, now obsolete, to church a woman after childbirth: about 1350, in a Psalter.^[6] Barnhart finds the verb before 1338, in Mannyng's Chronicle of England,^[2] and Etymonline dates it to the mid-14th century in the sense "to free from spiritual pollution".^[5]

Semantic evolution

The word came in with the religious senses of its French and Latin sources: ritual cleansing, and the cleansing of the soul from sin, which Gower used by 1393.^[6][5][11] The physical sense, freeing something from dirt or foreign matter, follows by 1398 in Trevisa,^[6][3] and Etymonline likewise dates "free from extraneous matter" to the late 14th century.^[5] From the 16th century the verb could mean ridding something of undesirable or alien elements, such as a language or a group.^[6][9] A Scots legal use, fulfilling a condition so that an obligation becomes absolute, is recorded from 1590.^[6] Johnson (1755) gave "to make pure" and "to free from any extraneous admixture", quoting Bacon on purifying the kingdom's "bad blood".^[12] The intransitive use, to become pure, lasted from 1645 to 1852.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1350 – to make ceremonially pure; to church a woman after childbirth (now obsolete).^[6]
• 1393 – to make morally or spiritually pure, in Gower.^[6][11]
• 1398 – to make physically clean; to remove impurities from.^[6][3]
• c. 1400 – to remove an impurity or disease; to purge.^[6]
• 1548 – to rid of undesirable or alien elements.^[6]
• 1590 – Scots law, to fulfil a condition.^[6]
• 1645 – intransitive, to become pure (obsolete by 1852).^[6]
• 1727 – of a priest, to cleanse the chalice during the Eucharist.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To remove dirt, pollution or other harmful matter from something: The plant purifies the river water before it reaches the town.^[13][14][6]
2. To free a person or the soul from sin or guilt.^[13][14][6]
3. To make clean in a ritual or ceremonial sense.^[13][14][6]
4. To rid something of elements thought foreign, improper or corrupting: They hoped to purify the language of loanwords.^[14][6][9]
5. (Scots law) To fulfil a condition, so that an obligation becomes absolute.^[6]

Word family

• purificatory
• purifier
• purification
• repurify
• unpurifying

Related words

• puritan
• pure
• purge
• purity
• -fy

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
4. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster