evil
e·vil/ˈiːvəl/adjective, noun
evil is spelled E-V-I-L, 2 syllables: e·vil. The wrong spelling people search most is efel: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 244 of all searches for the word. Evil is an adjective meaning “Intending to harm; malevolent”.
How many letters and syllables are in evil?
| Letters | 4: E-V-I-L |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: e·vil |
| In writing | 55 times per million words; the 1,865th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, efel, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell evil?
Evil is spelled E-V-I-L. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 245 of the searches for evil in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is evil?
Evil appears 55 times per million words in written English, the 1,865th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce evil?
- /ˈiːvəl/
- [ˈɪi̯vəl] ~ [ˈɪi̯vl̩]
- /ˈiːvɪl/
Evil has 2 syllables, split e·vil in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-evil.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with evil
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with evil?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as evil.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: live, veil, vile, vlei.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of evil
- eviller comparative
- eviler comparative
- more evil comparative
- evillest superlative
- evilest superlative
- most evil superlative
- evils plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does evil mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Intending to harm; malevolent.
an evil plot to brainwash and even kill innocent people
- 2
Morally corrupt.
If something is evil, it is never mandatory.
- 3
Unpleasant, foul (of odor, taste, mood, weather, etc.).
- 4
Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous.
- 5
obsoleteHaving harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious.
an evil beast; an evil plant; an evil crop
- 6
slangUndesirable; harmful; bad practice.
Global variables are evil; storing processing context in object member variables allows those objects to be reused in a much more flexible way.
noun
- 1
Moral badness; wickedness; malevolence; the forces or behaviors that are the opposite or enemy of good.
The evils of society include murder and theft.
- 2
Something which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; something which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; harm; injury; mischief.
- 3
obsoleteA malady or disease; especially in combination, as in king's evil, colt evil.
adverb
- 1
obsoletewickedly, evilly, iniquitously
- 2
obsoleteinjuriously, harmfully; in a damaging way.
- 3
obsoletebadly, poorly; in an insufficient way.
It went evil with him.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Evil in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | mauvais, maléfique, méchant, infâme , malfaisant , mal |
| German | böse, übel , Böse, Übel |
| Portuguese | mau, maléfico, malvado , mal |
| Spanish | malo, malvado, malévolo, maléfico, perverso , mal |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does evil come from?
From Middle English yvel, evel, ivel, uvel, from Old English yfel, from Proto-West Germanic *ubil, from Proto-Germanic *ubilaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂up(h₁)élos, a deverbal derivative of *h₂wep(h₁)-, *h₂wop(h₁)- (“treat badly”). See -le for the supposed suffix. Alternatively from *upélos (“evil”, literally “going over or beyond (acceptable limits)”), from Proto-Indo-European *upo, *h₃ewp- (“down, up, over”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).