ethos

plural ethe · plural ethea · plural ethoses

1. The character or fundamental values of a person, people, culture, or movement.

   Through all their projects, their abiding ethos has been observing and responding to the site and its existing ecology and growth patterns.

   2026 May 28, Cyrus Dunham, “Nature's Way”, in Architectural Digest, volume 83, number 4, page 106

   2 more examples

   To slip past censors, Chinese bloggers have become masters of comic subterfuge, cloaking their messages in protective layers of irony and satire. This is not a new concept, but it has erupted so powerfully that it now defines the ethos of the Internet in China.

   2011 October 26, Brook Larmer, “Where an Internet Joke Is Not Just a Joke”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   As we saw with Housing Problems, this 'telling one's own story' is an ethos Edgar Anstey would have applauded, and it was an ethos that has fed into Network Rail's work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Green explains: "COVID has produced huge challenges for us, but it showed there is such a need for film-making at a time like this."

   2021 March 10, Greg Morse, “Telling the railway's story on film”, in RAIL, number 926, page 49

2. rhetoricA form of rhetoric in which the writer or speaker invokes their authority, competence or expertise in an attempt to persuade others that their view is correct.
3. artThe traits in a work of art which express the ideal or typic character, as influenced by the ethos (character or fundamental values) of a people, rather than emotional situations or individual character traits in a narrow sense; opposed to pathos.