Definizione monolingua

morality

morality (countable and uncountable; plural moralities)

1. (uncountable) Recognition 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.
   • 1841, Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, ch. 3:

     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.

   • 1910, Jack London, Theft: A Play In Four Acts, ""Characters"":

     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.

   • 1911, G. K. Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens, ch. 16:

     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.

   • 1965, ""King Moves North,"" Time, 30 Apr.:

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

2. (countable) A set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct.
   • 1912, George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, act 5:

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

   • 1917, William MacLeod Raine. The Yukon Trail, ch. 14:

     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.""

3. (countable) A set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether respectable or not.
   • 1781, Samuel Johnson, ""Sheffield"" in Lives of the Poets:

     His morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions.

   • 1994, ""Man Convicted of Murder in 92 Bludgeoning,"" San Jose Mercury News, 4 Nov., p. 2B:

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

4. (countable, archaic) A lesson or pronouncement which contains advice about proper behavior.
   • 1824, Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronans Well, ch. 16:

     ""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.

   • 1882, William Makepeace Thackeray, ""Vanitas Vanitatum"" in Ballads, p. 195:

     What mean these stale moralities,

     Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble?

5. (uncountable, rare) Moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy which studies the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.
   • 1953, J. Kemp, ""Review of The Claim of Morality by N.H.G. Robinson,"" The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 12, p. 278:

     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"".

6. (countable, rare) A particular theory concerning the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.
   • 1954, Bernard Mayo, ""Ethics and Moral Controversy,"" The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 14, p. 11:

     Humes morality which ‘implies some sentiment common to all mankind’; Kants morality for all rational beings; Butlers morality with its presupposition of ‘uniformity of conscience’.

Definizione dizionario morality

	moralità
	recognition of / obedience to the rules of right conduct
	Recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong.

etica

morale

virtú

Altri significati:

(countable) A set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct.

(uncountable, rare) Moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy which studies the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.

(countable, rare) A particular theory concerning the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.

(uncountable) Recognition 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.

branch of philosophy

(countable) A set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether respectable or not.

(countable, archaic) A lesson or pronouncement which contains advice about proper behavior.

personal guiding principles

set of customs, traditions, rules of conduct

lesson or pronouncement