purge

See also: purgé and пурге

English

Etymology

From Middle English purgen, from Old French purgier, from Latin pūrgō (“I make pure, I cleanse”), from pūrus (“clean, pure”) + agō (“I make, I do”).

Pronunciation

Noun

purge (plural purges)

  1. An act of purging.
  2. (medicine) An evacuation of the bowels or a vomiting.
  3. A cleansing of pipes.
  4. A forcible removal of people, for example, from political activity.
    Stalin liked to ensure that his purges were not reversible.
    • 1971, Lyndon Johnson, “"I feel like I have already been here a year"”, in The Vantage Point‎, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 24:
      One of the few surviving Bolsheviks with real power, Mikoyan had been brought to Moscow by Stalin in 1926, had escaped innumerable purges, and had demonstrated an uncanny ability to survive and to associate himself with the right faction at the right time.
  5. That which purges; especially, a medicine that evacuates the intestines; a cathartic.
    • 1722, John Arbuthnot, Mr. Maitland’s account of inoculating the small-pox:
      he prescribes a Purge or a Vomit

Derived terms
English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *pewH-‎ (0 c, 37 e)

Translations

Verb

purge (third-person singular simple present purges, present participle purging, simple past and past participle purged)

  1. (transitive) To clean thoroughly; to cleanse; to rid of impurities.
  2. (transitive, religion) To free from sin, guilt, or the burden or responsibility of misdeeds.
  3. (transitive) To remove by cleansing; to wash away.
  4. (transitive, intransitive, medicine) To void or evacuate (the bowels or the stomach); to defecate or vomit.
  5. (transitive, medicine) To cause someone to purge, operate on (somebody) as or with a cathartic or emetic, or in a similar manner.
    • 1979, Octavia Butler, Kindred:
      "What did they die of?” I asked.
      "Fevers. The doctor came and bled them and purged them, but they still died."
      "He bled and purged babies?"
      "They were two and three. He said it would break the fever. And it did. But they … they died anyway."
  6. (transitive, of a person) To forcibly remove, e.g., from political activity.
    Deng Xiaoping was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution, but managed to return to power after Mao's death.
  7. (transitive, of an organization, by extension) To forcibly remove people from.
    Cromwell had Colonel Pride purge Parliament of royalists who opposed Charles I's execution.
  8. (transitive, law) To clear of a charge, suspicion, or imputation.
  9. (transitive) To clarify; to clear the dregs from (liquor).
  10. (intransitive) To become pure, as by clarification.
  11. (intransitive) To have or produce frequent evacuations from the intestines, as by means of a cathartic.
  12. (transitive) To trim, dress, or prune.

Derived terms

Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Anagrams

French

Pronunciation
  • Audio(file)

Noun

purge f (plural purges)

  1. purge

Verb

purge

  1. inflection of purger:
    1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
    2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

Middle English

Verb

purge

  1. Alternative form of purgen

Norman

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

purge f (plural purges)

  1. (Jersey) purgative
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