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• simon-pure
  simon-pure

  adjective

  real; genuine.
• simon pure
  simon pure

  Absolutely genuine, quite authentic, as in That laboratory test was simon pure; none of the specimens was adulterated. This expression comes from the name of a character in a play, Susannah Centilivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1717), who is the victim of an impersonation but turns up in the end and proves that he is “the real Simon Pure.”

simon-pure

American  

[sahy-muhn-pyoor] / ˈsaɪ mənˈpjʊər /

adjective

1. real; genuine.

   a simon-pure accent.

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simon-pure British  

adjective

1. real; genuine; authentic

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simon pure Idioms  

1. Absolutely genuine, quite authentic, as in That laboratory test was simon pure; none of the specimens was adulterated. This expression comes from the name of a character in a play, Susannah Centilivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1717), who is the victim of an impersonation but turns up in the end and proves that he is “the real Simon Pure.”

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Etymology

Origin of simon-pure

1710–20; short for the real Simon Pure, alluding to the victim of impersonation in Susanna Centlivre's play A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718)

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

simon-pure simon pure

But the notion that small community banks are somehow simon-pure, in contrast to the risk-happy banks of the East and West Coasts, is ludicrous on its face.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 21, 2023

“The Kidnap Murder Case” is real, simon-pure Van Dine, and that should be good enough for anybody.

From New York Times ● Oct. 21, 2021

And Canadians, with their British-oriented sensibilities, were conscious of amateurism and the role that sport played among the simon-pure.

From New York Times ● Jun. 9, 2012

Their weapons were the Indian club, the skipping rope and the trampoline; their uniforms were the leotard, the sweatshirt, and the bloomer; their hearts were uncompetitive and simon-pure.

From Time Magazine Archive

This is a simon-pure pocket, and it would keep a graduate mineralogist guessing to say how it got here, because it's a different proposition from the wash gold in the creek bed.

From North of Fifty-Three by Fischer, Anton Otto

Imitators of the magazine have turned up, but the Mercurians never fail to "distinguish between the simon pure article and the second best."

From Time Magazine Archive

There was one old chap in the town—Bill Budlong—who took a heap of pride in being the simon pure cuss.

From Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy." by Lorimer, George Horace

All these truthful sayings have been preserved as proverbs simply because they are simon pure truths.

From Dollars and Sense by Hunter, William Crosbie

The principal faction was led by Jose Miguel Gomez, who claimed to be representative of the original and only simon pure Liberals, and who regarded the other faction as an illegitimate schism.

From The History of Cuba, vol. 4 by Johnson, Willis Fletcher

The Nile of which you have read and along which are scattered the simon pure monuments of antiquity is the six hundred miles of winding river between Assouan, or First Cataract, and the sea.

From In Pastures New by Ade, George