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de-vo · W121

devo · evil; shame; worth/value-diminishment quality · ✅

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Domain ethics / theology / affect
Class quality / moral state / social state
Type compound
Register standard / ethical / theological / social-honour
First use Matthew 5–7 translation (Lord's Prayer: "deliver us from de-vo"; 7:11 "evil gifts"; Matthew 5:45 "evil person" = de-vo-li). Shame/honour register: SNG-001-E (S736): no de-vo / wi-vo — "Not in shame / [but] with honour."

Composition

de (decrease/decay) + vo (value/worth/quality) = decrease-of-worth. Head-final: vo (worth) is head; de specifies that the worth in question is undergoing or has undergone decrease/corruption.

Definition

de-vo = decrease-of-worth. One compositional form; two register-contexts: (1) MORAL-QUALITY register: evil; the quality of moral decay; value-corrosion; the state of being organized around decrease in value. Not a thing but a quality: the property of choices, agents, or states characterized by the corruption of goodness. Greek ponēros (evil, wicked, harmful). (2) HONOUR-SOCIAL register: shame; dishonour; loss of standing; the state or process of one's worth diminishing. Covers: the acute felt experience of having done something beneath one's worth; the social collapse of standing; the diminishment of dignity. Used as predicate: la-X de-vo = X is in a state of shame/dishonour. Used as noun: lo-de-vo = the shame itself; no de-vo = not in shame. The two readings are the same compositional fact seen from different angles: the moral reading attributes de-vo to choices/agents/states as a characterizing quality; the honour reading describes de-vo as a state that a person has entered or been placed in. Context disambiguates.

Notes

Key derivatives: de-vo-li = a person characterized by evil = an evil person de-vo-ki = entering evil/shame state (inchoative) pa-de-no-fe = place of boundless decay = Gehenna/hell (proposed; SOM-002, pending corpus test) Antonym: wi-vo (W190, will toward worth = honour-disposition = the stance that produces and maintains worth). Key antithetical pairing: no de-vo / wi-vo = "not in shame / [but] with honour" (SNG-001-E, S736). Contrast with: de-su (W119) — a fault-product (countable, addressable wrong); de-vo — the quality/state itself (uncountable, characterizes agents/states/persons). fa-de (W094) — affective decrease = distress: fa-de is quantitative affect-diminishing; de-vo is worth/dignity diminishing. The two can co-occur but name different dimensions. Registration note: W231 was a duplicate registration of this form in a shame-only framing; retired and merged into W121 (March 2026). All W231 corpus attestations (SNG-001-E, S736) resolve to W121. "Evil" in the Lord's Prayer "deliver us from evil": go-de-vo fe = bound us from the domain of evil-value = from the sphere of de-vo.

de (primitive), vo (primitive), de-su (W119), ka-no-de-su (W120), wi-vo (W190: honour-disposition — antonym), fa-de (W094: distress — related but distinct), vo-ne (W118: righteousness), de-vo-li (evil person derivation)

In the corpus

1 attestation.

S# Tonesu
S458 ti helm be-vo / ti helm de-vo
Dickens: "It was the spring of hope / it was the winter of despair."
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Generated from registry/entries.yaml.