| / English Dictionary |
MORAL
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The significance of a story or event
Example:
the moral of the story is to love thy neighbor
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("moral" is a kind of...):
import; meaning; significance; signification (the message that is intended or expressed or signified)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Concerned with principles of right and wrong or conforming to standards of behavior and character based on those principles
Example:
a moral life
Classified under:
Similar:
chaste (abstaining from unlawful sexual intercourse)
clean; clean-living (morally pure)
moralistic (narrowly and conventionally moral)
righteous (morally justified)
Also:
chaste (morally pure (especially not having experienced sexual intercourse))
good (morally admirable)
honorable; honourable (worthy of being honored; entitled to honor and respect)
righteous (characterized by or proceeding from accepted standards of morality or justice)
virtuous (morally excellent)
Attribute:
morality (concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct)
Antonym:
immoral (deliberately violating accepted principles of right and wrong)
Derivation:
morality (concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Psychological rather than physical or tangible in effect
Example:
moral support
Classified under:
Similar:
mental (involving the mind or an intellectual process)
Context examples:
I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy's death as any of us; but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
The branch of ethics that studies moral values in the biomedical sciences.
(Biomedical Ethics, NCI Thesaurus)
But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
"On the contrary, he was a moral prig," Haythorne blurted out, with apparently undue warmth.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
The branch of ethics that studies moral values in the clinical sciences.
(Clinical Ethics, NCI Thesaurus)
As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
He certainly knew what was right, nor could she fix on any one article of moral duty evidently transgressed; but yet she would have been afraid to answer for his conduct.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
“A woman, sir, has her love to bestow,” said my uncle. “A man has his snuff-box. Neither is to be lightly offered. It is a lapse of taste; nay, more, it is a breach of morals.”
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Also called moral.
(Ethical, NCI Dictionary)
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