Etymology From Middle English pure, pur, from Old French pur, from Latin pūrus (“clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewH- (“to cleanse, purify”). Displaced native Middle English lutter (“pure, clear, sincere”) (from Old English hlūtor, hluttor), Middle English skere (“pure, sheer, clear”) (from Old English scǣre and Old Norse skǣr), Middle English schir (“clear, pure”) (from Old English scīr), Middle English smete, smeate (“pure, refined”) (from Old English smǣte; compare Old English mǣre (“pure”)).
Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient or modern history records.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter VII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:
2
Free of foreign material or pollutants.
A guinea is pure gold if it has in it no alloy.1725, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, […], 2nd edition, London: […] John Clark and Richard Hett, […], Emanuel Matthews, […], and Richard Ford, […], published 1726, →OCLC:
As for the rest, the air here is said to be purer than elsewhere in Ireland; the water of the Nore is beautifully transparent; and the bogless state of the land helps out the rhyme.1837, Leitch Ritchie, Ireland Picturesque and Romantic, volume 1, page 225:
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"Hetch Hetchy water is the purest, wholly unpolluted, and forever unpollutable."1908 January 4, John Muir, “The Hetch Hetchy Valley”, in Sierra Club Bulletin, volume VI, number 4:
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Free of immoral behavior or qualities; clean.
Laye hondes sodenly on no man nether be part taker of wother mens synnes. Kepe thy silfe pure.1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, 1 Timothy v:[22], folio cclxxviij, recto:
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Mere; that and that only.
That idea is pure madness!
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Of a branch of science Done for its own sake instead of serving another branch of science.
The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:
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Human sciences, Linguistics, Phonetics, Phonology, Sciences Of a single, simple sound or tone; said of some vowels and the unaspirated consonants.
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Of sound Without harmonics or overtones; not harsh or discordant.
Well when ah's youngah, ah'd just light a candle rahn de dinna table play pure crazy 8s and spades vif my brotha til we lot dozed off...2013 April 12, “Exclusive: Meet Derpuntae - Bermuda's first meme”, in The Bermuda Sun, archived from the original on 12 Dec 2022:
Etymology From Middle English pure, pur, from Old French pur, from Latin pūrus (“clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewH- (“to cleanse, purify”). Displaced native Middle English lutter (“pure, clear, sincere”) (from Old English hlūtor, hluttor), Middle English skere (“pure, sheer, clear”) (from Old English scǣre and Old Norse skǣr), Middle English schir (“clear, pure”) (from Old English scīr), Middle English smete, smeate (“pure, refined”) (from Old English smǣte; compare Old English mǣre (“pure”)).
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Scotland to a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.
You’re pure busy.
I just get pure shy with the interview cats.1996, Trainspotting (film)
pure
verb
Etymology From Middle English pure, pur, from Old French pur, from Latin pūrus (“clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewH- (“to cleanse, purify”). Displaced native Middle English lutter (“pure, clear, sincere”) (from Old English hlūtor, hluttor), Middle English skere (“pure, sheer, clear”) (from Old English scǣre and Old Norse skǣr), Middle English schir (“clear, pure”) (from Old English scīr), Middle English smete, smeate (“pure, refined”) (from Old English smǣte; compare Old English mǣre (“pure”)).
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Golf, Hobbies, Lifestyle, Sports To hit (the ball) completely cleanly and accurately.
Tiger Woods pured his first drive straight down the middle of the fairway.
Etymology From Middle English pure, pur, from Old French pur, from Latin pūrus (“clean, free from dirt or filth, unmixed, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pewH- (“to cleanse, purify”). Displaced native Middle English lutter (“pure, clear, sincere”) (from Old English hlūtor, hluttor), Middle English skere (“pure, sheer, clear”) (from Old English scǣre and Old Norse skǣr), Middle English schir (“clear, pure”) (from Old English scīr), Middle English smete, smeate (“pure, refined”) (from Old English smǣte; compare Old English mǣre (“pure”)).
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One who, or that which, is pure.
... the establishment of an inferior College, and the consequent connexion of the many thousands of British practitioners in medicine and surgery with a subordinate institution, and one that should be subservient to the government of the pures.1845, The Lancet, page 187:
Took a drop of the pure, to keep my spirits from sinking, […]c. 1870, D. K. Gavan, Rocky Road to Dublin:
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All interpretive frames will impose their categories on the object of historical analysis, and I am not proposing that this narrative of the "pures"; be rejected in favor of some phantasmatic framework that claims to derive more purely from the sources themselves. I will show in chapter 3 that, since the "pures" possibly did not even exist […]1998, Christopher Leigh Connery, The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 30: