evil (adj.) Look up evil at Dictionary.com Old English yfel
(Kentish evel) "bad, vicious, ill, wicked," from Proto-Germanic
*ubilaz (cognates: Old Saxon ubil, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch
evel, Dutch euvel, Old High German ubil, German übel, Gothic
ubils), from PIE *upelo-, from root *wap- "bad, evil" (cognates:
Hittite huwapp- "evil").  In Old English and other older
Germanic languages other than Scandinavian, "this word is the
most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike
or disparagement" [OED]. Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used
where we would use bad, cruel, unskillful, defective (adj.), or
harm (n.), crime, misfortune, disease (n.). In Middle English,
bad took the wider range of senses and evil began to focus on
moral badness. Both words have good as their opposite. Evil-
favored (1520s) meant "ugly." Evilchild is attested as an
English surname from 13c.  The adverb is Old English yfele,
originally of words or speech. Also as a noun in Old English,
"what is bad; sin, wickedness; a