morality

plural moralities

1. uncountableRecognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental disposition or characteristic of behaving in a manner intended to produce morally good results.

   It may be true that you cannot legislate morality, but behavior can be regulated.

   1965 April 30, “King Moves North”, in TIME, archived from the original on 23 May 2009

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   Without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly immoral man could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first love the thing, sympathize with it: that is, be virtuously related to it.

   1840 May, Thomas Carlyle, “(please specify the page)”, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship and The Heroic in History, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1840, →OCLC

   Ellery Jackson-Hubbard. […] A man radiating prosperity, optimism and selfishness. Has no morality whatever. Is a conscious individualist, cold-blooded, pitiless, working only for himself, and believing in nothing but himself.

   1910 November, Jack London, “Actors’ Description of Characters”, in Theft: A Play in Four Acts, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page x

   Science and art without morality are not dangerous in the sense commonly supposed. They are not dangerous like a fire, but dangerous like a fog.

   1911, G. K. Chesterton, chapter 16, in Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens

   Masters and Johnson wanted their work to be taken seriously, and wanted to stay a step ahead of the morality police, so they tended to write in almost comically dense medicalese.

   2009 June 26, Dwight Garner, “Out of the Bedroom, Into the Clinic”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2022

   Synonyms: decency, rectitude, righteousness, uprightness, virtuousness

2. countableA set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct.

   I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality.

   1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, Act V, page 173

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   He smiled a little. "Morality is the average conduct of the average man at a given time and place. It is based on custom and expediency."

   1917, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 14, in The Yukon Trail

   Synonyms: conventions, morals, mores

3. countableA set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether respectable or not.

   His morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions.

   1781, Samuel Johnson, “Sheffield”, in Lives of the Poets

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   Deputy District Attorney Bill Tingle called Jones "the devil's right-hand man" and said he should be punished for his "atrocious morality."

   1994 November 4, “Man Convicted of Murder in '92 Bludgeoning”, in San Jose Mercury News, page 2B

   Synonyms: morals

4. archaiccountableA lesson or pronouncement which contains advice about proper behavior.

   What mean these stale moralities, / Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble?

   1882, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanitas Vanitatum”, in Ballads, page 195

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   "She had done her duty"—"she left the matter to them that had a charge anent such things"—and "Providence would bring the mystery to light in his own fitting time"—such were the moralities with which the good dame consoled herself.

   1824, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 16, in St. Ronan's Well

   Synonyms: homily

5. countableA morality play.

   The Moralities displayed something more of art and invention than the Mysteries; in them virtues, vices and qualities were personified, and something like a plot was frequently to be discovered.

   1862, George Borrow, Wild Wales

6. rareuncountableMoral philosophy, the branch of philosophy which studies the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.

   Robinson sums up the conclusion of the first part of his book as being "that the task of the moralist is to set in their proper relation to one another the three different types of moral judgment . . . and so reveal the field of morality as a single self-coherent system".

   1953, J. Kemp, “Review of The Claim of Morality by N.H.G. Robinson”, in The Philosophical Quarterly, volume 3, number 12, page 278

   Synonyms: ethics, moral philosophy

7. countablerareA particular theory concerning the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.

   Hume's morality which ‘implies some sentiment common to all mankind’; Kant's morality for all rational beings; Butler's morality with its presupposition of ‘uniformity of conscience’.

   1954, Bernard Mayo, “Ethics and Moral Controversy”, in The Philosophical Quarterly, volume 4, number 14, page 11

   Synonyms: ethics, moral philosophy