What's the difference between evil and villainous?

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.

Villainous


Definition:

  • (a.) Base; vile; mean; depraved; as, a villainous person or wretch.
  • (a.) Proceeding from, or showing, extreme depravity; suited to a villain; as, a villainous action.
  • (a.) Sorry; mean; mischievous; -- in a familiar sense.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But I know the full story and it’s a bit different from what people see.” The full story is heavy on the extremes of emotion and as the man who took a stricken but much-loved club away from its community, Winkelman knows that his part is that of villain; the war of words will rumble on.
  • (2) They’re not moustache-twirling villains that are going, “ah ha ha that’s great”, they’re going: “You’re right.
  • (3) Society needs a villain and right now we’re convenient.” “ I will carefully admit there has been an awful lot of almonds planted that maybe shouldn’t have been because outside money came in and wanted to plant,” he says.
  • (4) Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
  • (5) The success of Capote paved the way for bigger and more nuanced parts for Hoffman, his turn as the villain in Mission: Impossible III (2006) notwithstanding.
  • (6) Maleficent, Disney's latest film out on 28 May, offers the untold back story of the villain from the 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty, with Jolie in the title role.
  • (7) When I was nine or 10 I leapt directly from Doctor Dolittle to Dr No, leaving behind all those stupid talking animals and free-falling into a far naughtier realm of suavely promiscuous government assassins, hot shell-diving beauties and villains with metal hands and messianic plans for humanity.
  • (8) And that’s what we do in drama and comedy: we create our own heroes and villains, so no one really gets hurt.
  • (9) You're a devious villain conducting the perfect crime, like the dashing guest star in the opening scene of a classic Columbo.
  • (10) These villains have limited aspirations, and the man in the white hat has a limited arsenal of era-appropriate weaponry: a gun, a bow and arrow, a few grenades, maybe even a tank.
  • (11) The people shaping the news require a very simple story – they have to be angels and villains.” John Stoltenberg is a gay-rights activist who lived with the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin until her death in 2005.
  • (12) We are not the villains you paint us on your trollblogs.
  • (13) For the real villain – look behind Obama, to the Republican party.
  • (14) It is, according to environmentalist and MP Zac Goldsmith, the most dramatic turnaround of any global green villain ever seen and an encouraging sign that huge environmental challenges can be tackled.
  • (15) As Paltrow explains: “So-called pro-life measures are being used in ways that not only violate women’s reproductive rights, but create the basis for depriving them of their constitutional personhood and human rights.” While it may be easy to cast women who drink in pregnancy as villains, criminalising them does no one any favours, save for those with a broader anti-women agenda.
  • (16) Fleming was intrigued by Engelhard's extravagant lifestyle and when he wrote Goldfinger , published in 1959, he based its eponymous villain on him.
  • (17) In the Kenzie and Gennaro series, like all good detective fiction, the city is as sharp and unpredictable as the villains themselves.
  • (18) Why swapping heroes for heroines is a Top Dollar idea Read more The potential gender-swap casting comes after Britain’s Andrea Riseborough was named earlier this month as a frontrunner to play the villain Top Dollar in a high-profile upcoming remake of cult comic book movie The Crow.
  • (19) Mohammed al-Sabban Senior economic adviser, Saudi Arabia Moustachioed high-up in his country's ministry of petroleum and mineral resources, leader of the Saudi Arabian negotiating team, and a reasonable bet for Copenhagen's most likely villain.
  • (20) For one thing, villains always believe they are exceptional.