Word.ws English Dictionary

better angels

better angels noun: morally upright or otherwise positive attributes of human character.

Noun

better angels pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) Morally upright or otherwise positive attributes of human character.
    • So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge. Chapter 29.”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume III, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC
    • The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.1861 March 4, Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

Examples of better angels in a sentence

  • What gives this day its special grace is the glimpse it yields of a child's belief in the better angels of a grown-up world.1982 December 25, “Opinion: Children at the Window”, in New York Times, retrieved 03 Sep 2016:
  • Call me wrong, call me right / But I bring my better angels to every fight2007, Chris Wallin, Craig Wiseman, “Love me if you can”, performed by Toby Keith:
  • Of his fellow tech CEOs – the ones competing to rush out their rival chatbots – he said: “I think the better angels are going to win out.” Better angels?2023 May 8, Naomi Klein, “AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

Forms of better angels

alternative formbetter angels of one's nature

Questions about better angels

What does better angels mean?
Better angels means morally upright or otherwise positive attributes of human character.
How do you use better angels in a sentence?
What gives this day its special grace is the glimpse it yields of a child's belief in the better angels of a grown-up world.
What part of speech is better angels?
Better angels is a noun.

Words near better angels in the dictionary

  1. Bettenhausens
  2. Bettens
  3. better
  4. better an egg today than a hen tomorrow
  5. better and better
  6. better angels
  7. better angels of one's nature
  8. better angels of someone's nature
  9. better ball
  10. Better Boy
  11. Better Boy tomato

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: better angels (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-better angels.ogg.

Cite this entry: “better angels.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/better_angels. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.