HONOURABLE

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Worthy of being honored; entitled to honor and respect

Example:

honorable service to his country

Synonyms:

honorable; honourable

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

august; revered; venerable (profoundly honored)

laureate (worthy of the greatest honor or distinction)

time-honored; time-honoured (honored because of age or long usage)

Also:

honest; honorable (not disposed to cheat or defraud; not deceptive or fraudulent)

just (used especially of what is legally or ethically right or proper or fitting)

moral (concerned with principles of right and wrong or conforming to standards of behavior and character based on those principles)

noble (having or showing or indicative of high or elevated character)

reputable (having a good reputation)

worthy (having worth or merit or value; being honorable or admirable)

Attribute:

honorableness; honourableness (the quality of deserving honor or respect; characterized by honor)

Derivation:

honourableness (the quality of deserving honor or respect; characterized by honor)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Adhering to ethical and moral principles

Example:

followed the only honorable course of action

Synonyms:

ethical; honorable; honourable

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

right (in conformance with justice or law or morality)

Derivation:

honourableness (the quality of deserving honor or respect; characterized by honor)

Credits

Context examples:

Could you have a motive for the trust, that was not honourable and flattering to me?

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

But the young wrens said: “We will not eat yet, the bear must come to the nest, and beg for pardon and say that we are honourable children, before we will do that.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

But I would not have him taken in; I would not have him duped; I would have it all fair and honourable.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his treatise.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is needless to say that the dead steersman has been reverently removed from the place where he held his honourable watch and ward till death—a steadfastness as noble as that of the young Casabianca—and placed in the mortuary to await inquest.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I was born in the year 18— to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It seems her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself—really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours—she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

And he was—honourable and manful—for two year going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I am convinced that his feelings are most deep and most honourable.