الخبيثة
al-Khabīthah
The feminine form of khabīth, meaning a deed, word or thing that is foul, impure or bad; its plural is khabāʾith.
What it means
Khabīth means foul, impure or bad, and it is the opposite of ṭayyib, which means wholesome and pure. Al-khabīthah is the feminine form with the article, and it names a deed, word or thing that has this quality; its plural is khabāʾith. The Quran uses the root in several settings. It likens an evil word to an evil tree (14:26), it calls the shameful acts of the people of Lot khabāʾith (21:74), and it says that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) makes good things lawful and foul things unlawful (7:157). The word therefore joins moral badness and physical impurity in one term.
Often misunderstood as
Rendering it only as “evil” hides that the word also covers what is physically foul or impure, not just what is morally bad.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 31, listed as AL KHABĪTHAH. The definition is restated here.