wickedness

Etymology

It is formed from English wicked + -ness,^[2][3][4][5] in Middle English wikkednesse.^[6] Middle English also had wikkedhede.^[3] Wicked is apparently an extension of the older adjective wikke (“bad, wicked”),^[2][3][7] itself perhaps an adjectival use of Old English wicca (“wizard”), the masculine counterpart of the word behind witch.^[3][7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Wicked action or conduct: before 1300, in the Cursor Mundi.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to about 1300,^[3] Dictionary.com to 1250–1300,^[5] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged to the 14th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept close to its first meaning, with the act coming first and then the quality: a single wicked act, with a plural, is recorded from before 1325, and wicked character or disposition from before 1340, in R. Rolle's Psalter.^[2] Chaucer uses it 48 times, as against twice in Gower.^[6] Following the wider sense of wicked, "bad" in various ways, it could also mean poorness of spirit, in a 1487 copy of Barbour's Bruce, and malignancy or corruption of a physical kind, in Lanfranc's Cirurgie of about 1400.^[2] Johnson (1755) defines it as "corruption of manners; guilt; moral ill".^[9]

Timeline

• before 1300 – wicked action or conduct.^[2]
• before 1325 – a wicked act, with a or in the plural.^[2]
• before 1340 – the quality of being wicked; depravity.^[2]
• c. 1400 – physical malignancy or corruption (rare and obsolete).^[2]
• 1487 – poorness of spirit (obsolete).^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The quality or state of being wicked; evil or sinfulness: the wickedness of the old regime.^[4][2]
2. Wicked character or conduct; vice or iniquity.^[4][2][9]
3. A wicked act: He confessed his many wickednesses.^[4][2]

Related words

• wicked
• witch

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
7. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.