| / English Dictionary |
VIRTUE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong
Synonyms:
moral excellence; virtue; virtuousness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("virtue" is a kind of...):
good; goodness (moral excellence or admirableness)
Derivation:
virtuous (morally excellent)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A particular moral excellence
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("virtue" is a kind of...):
good; goodness (moral excellence or admirableness)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "virtue"):
cardinal virtue (one of the seven preeminent virtues)
Derivation:
virtuous (morally excellent)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Morality with respect to sexual relations
Synonyms:
chastity; sexual morality; virtue
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("virtue" is a kind of...):
morality (concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct)
Attribute:
chaste (morally pure (especially not having experienced sexual intercourse))
unchaste (not chaste)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "virtue"):
honor; honour; pureness; purity (a woman's virtue or chastity)
Derivation:
virtuous (in a state of sexual virginity)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Any admirable quality or attribute
Example:
work of great merit
Synonyms:
merit; virtue
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("virtue" is a kind of...):
worth (the quality that renders something desirable or valuable or useful)
Context examples:
I have asked myself if the best which can be done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some savage creature.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life of effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
A process used for separating mixtures by virtue of differences in absorbency.
(Column Chromatography, NCI Thesaurus)
On the other hand, a touch of madness, real or assumed, was a passport through doors which were closed to wisdom and to virtue.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Isolation of pure liquids by virtue of their different evaporation characteristics.
(Evaporation Purification, NCI Thesaurus)
And it would be hard indeed, if so remote a prince’s notions of virtue and vice were to be offered as a standard for all mankind.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
But it is not often that virtue can boast an interest such as this.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
A set of genes coding for diverse proteins which, by virtue of their high degree of sequence similarity, are believed to have evolved from a single ancestral gene.
(Gene Family, NCI Thesaurus)
"I can keep you in reasonable check now," I reflected; "and I don't doubt to be able to do it hereafter: if one expedient loses its virtue, another must be devised."
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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