Etymology
Origin of wickedness
Middle English word dating back to 1250–1300; see origin at wicked, -ness
Explanation
Wickedness goes way past being naughty or mischievous; it means a quality of true evil. In an old spy movie, the villain might reveal his wickedness by cackling with delight while carrying out dastardly plans. A tyrant's cruel treatment of citizens is evidence of wickedness, while literary antagonists like Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth and Voldemort from the Harry Potter series display their wickedness through many vicious actions. Wickedness and wicked come from a now-obsolete adjective, wick, meaning "bad or false," and an Old English root it shares with wizard and witch.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Wickedness sounds so medieval, so Grimm’s—a throwback to the era of Macbeth, in fact—but it remains a subject of serious debate among sophisticated contemporary moral philosophers such as Mary Midgely and John Hick.
From Slate • Apr. 26, 2013
"Wickedness was like food," they found, "once you got started it was hard to stop."
From The Guardian • Jul. 20, 2012
Nothing could be more wackily multifocal than The Tents of Wickedness, a story told through a sequence of parodies of other writers, among them Marquand, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Proust, Joyce and Kafka.
From Time Magazine Archive
A Wicked Camp Remedy for Wickedness Perhaps he ran from the awful wickedness of the camp as well as from the famine and pestilence.
From Peter the Hermit A Tale of Enthusiasm by Goodsell, Daniel A.
Let all the People hear and fear, and let no more any such Wickedness be done as has produced this woeful Spectacle.
From The Book of Buried Treasure Being a True History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, etc., which are sought for to this day by Paine, Ralph Delahaye
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
