moral

comparative more moral · superlative most moral

1. Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behaviour, especially conforming to principles of rectitude.

   a moral obligation

   2 more examples

   moral judgments; a moral poem

   She had wandered without rule or guidance in a moral wilderness.

   1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC

   Synonyms: ethical, good, decent, righteous

2. Conforming to a given standard of right behaviour.

   a moral action

   Synonyms: acceptable, appropriate, courteous, decent, decorous, mannerly, proper, incorruptible

3. Being sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment.

   1 more example

   The stories did not seem to me to touch life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC

4. Capable of right and wrong action.

   a moral agent

5. Probable but not proved.

   a moral certainty

   Synonyms: virtual

6. Positively affecting the mind, confidence, or will.

   a moral victory; moral support

plural morals

1. The ethical significance or practical lesson.

   The moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that if you repeatedly lie, people won't believe you when you tell the truth.

   1 more example

   We protest against the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral enters.

   1841, Thomas Macaulay, Comic Dramatists of the Restoration (printed in Edinburgh Review, January 1841)

2. in pluralMoral practices or teachings: modes of conduct.

   a candidate with strong morals

   Synonyms: ethics, mores

3. A depiction of good or heroic actions.

   Synonyms: message

4. obsoleteA morality play.
5. datedslangA moral certainty.

   "You'd better not collar anything now, because it's a moral that old Antonio would nip out behind one of those cases."

   1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 22

   1 more example

   "One thing," added George, after the peculiarities of the situation had been sufficiently admitted, "it's going to be the last time I'm mixed up in what isn't strictly on the level. If we get clear this once with anything like tidy, old girl, it'll be that little cottage with the pigs and poultry for a moral."

   1934, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], The Bravo of London

6. datedslangAn exact counterpart.

present singular third person morals · US participle present moraling · UK participle present moralling · US participle past moraled · US past moraled · UK participle past moralled · UK past moralled

1. intransitiveTo moralize.

plural Morals

1. A surname from Spanish.

1. A township in Shelby County, Indiana, United States.