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The Scarlet Pimpernel vocabulary
143 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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pernicious
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synonyms: baleful, malefic ???
► definition
Definition:having a subtle, harmful effectevil; wicked
► uses
Uses:
describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture.
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An old gentleman in Naples [...] began to bewail his nurture, and to muse at his nature, being incensed against the one as most pernicious, and inflamed with the other as most precious
John Lyly. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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sitting on the couch under her pernicious, unpredictable cuckoo clock,
Gillian Flynn. Gone Girl, p.370 (2012)
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I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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Christ says, "There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repent-eth than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance" (Luke xv. 7). No wonder that sin abounds in all Christian countries; and it always will abound while people are taught such pernicious doctrines.
Kersey and Lydia Graves. The Bible of Bibles (1879)
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it was a breach of contract to mix him up with such villainous company, and that it was poisonous, and pernicious, and infamous, and shameful, and I don't know what else.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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her pernicious habit of not calling things by their names had brought about a new confusion, for the only thing that the telepathic surgeons had found was a drop in the uterus which could be corrected by the use of a pessary.
Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude, p.373 (1970)
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