Meanings
- pluralplural of ethos
These three valuational attitudes form a triangle of mutually opposing ethea.
1994, Richard T. Hull, A Quarter Century of Value Inquiry, page 1805 more examples
From them sprang, all with a sense of dividing and mapping out boundaries, Moira (Destiny) and Nomos (Law), Nemos (Sanctuary) and Nemesis (Avenging Anger or Righteous Indignation), Ethea, the haunts of the country in which one ranges, and so customs, established behaviour, habits.
1918, John Herbert Parsons, Mind and the Nation: a précis of applied psychology, page 23Hartmann means this interpretation of what most would call historical historical relativism to apply also to the contemporaneous diversity of ethea among cultures, sub-cultures, and (evidently) individuals who adopt the viewpoint of one of these.
1984, Eva Hauel Cadwallader, Searchlight on Values: Nicolai Hartmann’s Twentieth-century Value Platonism, page 93The question arises from a limited ethos combined with its universalization, which transgresses its own limits, and its claim to authority over other ethea.
1996, Charles E. Scott, On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethics and Politics, page 46A politics of the order of the Athenian Three has no more person or ethea in it — has only a psyche of halve to logos and their false conjunction supported by an invented episteme, an invented noun instead of a participle…
1997, Charles Olson et al., Collected Prose, page 358This question echoes the earliest use of ethos that dates back to Homer and Hesiod, influences Isocrates’ theory of rhetoric and moral character, and, as Charles Chamberlain notes, “refers to the range or arena where someone is most truly at home and which underlies all the fine appearances [‘habits’ and ‘customs’: also ethea] that people adopt”.
2004, Michael J. Hyde, The Ethos of Rhetoric, page XVI
Origin
- Ancient Greekἤθεα
- Englishethea
Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἤθεα (ḗthea), the uncontracted nominative plural form of ἦθος (êthos).
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Cite this entry
ethea. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ethea
“ethea.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ethea. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ethea,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ethea.
Source: ethea on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.