What's the difference between evil and mischief?

Evil


Definition:

  • (a.) Having qualities tending to injury and mischief; having a nature or properties which tend to badness; mischievous; not good; worthless or deleterious; poor; as, an evil beast; and evil plant; an evil crop.
  • (a.) Having or exhibiting bad moral qualities; morally corrupt; wicked; wrong; vicious; as, evil conduct, thoughts, heart, words, and the like.
  • (a.) Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous; as, evil tidings; evil arrows; evil days.
  • (n.) Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.
  • (n.) Moral badness, or the deviation of a moral being from the principles of virtue imposed by conscience, or by the will of the Supreme Being, or by the principles of a lawful human authority; disposition to do wrong; moral offence; wickedness; depravity.
  • (n.) malady or disease; especially in the phrase king's evil, the scrofula.
  • (adv.) In an evil manner; not well; ill; badly; unhappily; injuriously; unkindly.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) King Salman of Saudi Arabia urged the redoubling of efforts to “eradicate this dangerous scourge and rid the world of its evils”.
  • (2) More evil than Clocky , the alarm clock that rolls away when you reach out to silence it, or the Puzzle Alarm , which makes you complete a simple puzzle before it'll go quiet, the Money Shredding Alarm Clock methodically destroys your cash unless you rouse yourself.
  • (3) To confront this evil – and defeat it, standing together for our values, for our security, for our prosperity.” Merkel gave a strong endorsement of Cameron’s reform strategy, saying that Britain’s demands were “not just understandable, but worthy of support”.
  • (4) "Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous."
  • (5) Richard now is presented, albeit somewhat inconsistently, as evil in response to social ostracism because of his ugly deformities.
  • (6) One view of these results stems from the belief that contraception is a necessary evil and the pill is the closest to a 'natural' sex act.
  • (7) Answer, citing Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This is a very British suicide.
  • (8) So that you know he's evil, he is dressed like a giant, bedraggled grey duckling, in a fur coat made up of bits of chewed-up wolf.
  • (9) How World of Warcraft train future soldiers One odder digression sees the two discussing whether or not MMORPGs, video games like World of Warcraft, are evil.
  • (10) The deputy prime minister branded the treatment meted out to the four-year-old by his mother, Magdelena Luczak, and stepfather, Mariusz Krezolek, as evil and vile, but suggested it was up to the whole of society to stop such tragedies.
  • (11) We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil.
  • (12) Questioned as to whether Google needs to alter its mission statement, which was twinned with the company mantra “don’t be evil, for the next stage of company growth in an interview with the Financial Times , Page responded: “We’re in a bit of uncharted territory.
  • (13) "I have been an evil witch, but now I can set light to the house and die happy."
  • (14) But at some point I realized that it's precisely because they continuously justify so much violence and aggression from their side that they have such a boundless compulsion to depict others as the Uniquely Primitive and Violent Evil.
  • (15) For here we see the depravity to which man can sink, the barbarity that unfolds when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and life; we see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph when good people do nothing."
  • (16) The US said it had removed North Korea – once a member of George Bush's axis of evil – from the terror list to breathe life into the stalled nuclear negotiations and would continue to pressure Pyongyang to resolve the abduction issue.
  • (17) As he described, with something approaching relish, the horrifying effect of a desperate eurozone willing to destroy the British economy, our industry and our society, purely to protect itself, I was reminded of the epic Last Judgement by John Martin, now in the Tate, which depicts the terrifying chaos as the good are separated from the evil damned.
  • (18) Channel One also branded Berezovsky an "evil genius," and a report on his demise quoted a senior member of the ruling United Russia , Vyacheslav Nikonov, saying he found it hard to believe the news was true.
  • (19) In recent months there have been series of protests against the intensifying campaign, with one Catholic leader denouncing the cross removals as an “evil act” .
  • (20) Time and again they said to me: ‘I knew I shouldn’t, but I had to weigh it up against what was happening, and it was the lesser of two evils.’ Years later many of these women are still ashamed of themselves.

Mischief


Definition:

  • (n.) Harm; damage; esp., disarrangement of order; trouble or vexation caused by human agency or by some living being, intentionally or not; often, calamity, mishap; trivial evil caused by thoughtlessness, or in sport.
  • (n.) Cause of trouble or vexation; trouble.
  • (v. t.) To do harm to.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They want to send a very clear message to China that they are serious about this.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest This image from the US navy purportedly shows Chinese dredging vessels in the waters around Mischief reef in the disputed Spratly archipelago in May 2015.
  • (2) Steering the debate through these turbulent waters with more than his usual sense of mischief was David Dimbleby .
  • (3) And he was not above a spot of mischief on that score, imagining perhaps - and despite the prime minster's known stance – a time of closer European integration.
  • (4) | Howard W French Read more In the South China Sea, China has, by massive dredging operations, turned submerged reefs with names out of the novels of Joseph Conrad – Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross Reef – into artificial islands, and is completing a 3,000m runway on Fiery Cross.
  • (5) Nelson said: "Against the cacophony of the 24-hour news era, there has never been a greater need for what the Spectator offers: wit, style, mischief, elegance of thought and independence of opinion.
  • (6) Their carefully judged mischief lightened the whole mixture like stiffly beaten egg-whites.
  • (7) Campaigning before the June election Demirtaş had been full of mischief, needling Erdoğan, making fun of the AKP’s gaffes.
  • (8) He had a chirpy self-confidence even then and a sense of humour, but what made him attractive to a journalist was his enthusiasm for mischief.
  • (9) Did an implied "come up and see my target seat" let a political supremo make passes at women well out of his league – or did they make it up and risk all for mischief?
  • (10) He wrote with mischief and a sometimes acid eye about the theatre of politics.
  • (11) There is a new thirst for characters, for mischief-makers and rascals, for politicians whose mistakes make them more accessible to the rest of us.
  • (12) If they are not rascally Tories making mischief or communist infiltrators, then they are leftie romantics, their heads in a dwam and full of ideals incompatible with modern, monetarist Britain.
  • (13) The anecdote describes both his ego and his attachment to mischief-making – and it might even be true.
  • (14) Some people have tried to make mischief by claiming that the pupil premium is not additional money.
  • (15) 'Positive points are difficult to find today,' he said in that gnomic way of his that falls between irony and mischief.
  • (16) In the fevered Daily Mail version, this fact suggests a nefarious and hyperactive court, up to mischief and rejoicing in 'overruling' national authorities, better to promote the interests of sex offenders and the homicidal.
  • (17) US manoeuvre in South China Sea leaves little wiggle room with China Read more The guided-missile destroyer reportedly received orders to travel within 12 nautical miles (22.2km, or 13.8 miles) of the Spratlys’ Mischief and Subi reefs, which are at the heart of a controversial Chinese island building campaign that has soured ties between Washington and Beijing.
  • (18) I suspect that messrs Fry and Connolly – who grew up watching this man segue from gar- landed stage-thesp to tireless campaigner (Stonewall, women's and children's rights) to Hollywood catnip to that dreadful position for anyone with a fine remaining sense of mischief: being on the cusp of national-treasure status – were equally conscious of the company they were in.
  • (19) The introduction of Olsen in place of the sad and utterly disorientated McGrath for the last 15 minutes provided no answers as Oxford's willingness and determination to push wide down the flanks where Phillips was always a source of mischief only served to underline the frailty to United's current defensive framework.
  • (20) Gizewski could be accused of eccentricity (there is also a long letter to Social Democrat party members on his site, explaining why they should have voted against a coalition with Merkel's party), and perhaps of wilful mischief – he could have just linked to one of the thousands of other scans of Mein Kampf you can find on Google.