Word.ws English Dictionary

moral of the story

moral of the story noun: the key lesson or message that an incident, situation or other happening conveys; a general takeaway point.

Noun

moral of the story (plural morals of the story or morals of the stories)

  1. (idiomatic) The key lesson or message that an incident, situation or other happening conveys; a general takeaway point.
    • (please add the primary text of this usage example)
    • The moral of the story — "Wait till you're a big pot" — is a sound one.1992, David Pannick, Advocates
    Synonyms:
    essence, quintessence, thrust, bowels, sum, brass tacks, core, crux, gist, drift
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see moral, story; the ethical lesson to be learned from a fictional tale.

Synonyms of moral of the story

20 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of moral of the story

pluralmorals of the story
pluralmorals of the stories

Questions about moral of the story

What does moral of the story mean?
Moral of the story means the key lesson or message that an incident, situation or other happening conveys; a general takeaway point.
What part of speech is moral of the story?
Moral of the story is a noun.
What is the plural of moral of the story?
The plural of moral of the story is morals of the story.

Words near moral of the story in the dictionary

  1. moral minimums
  2. moral nihilism
  3. moral objectivism
  4. moral obligation
  5. moral obligations
  6. moral of the story
  7. moral order
  8. moral orders
  9. moral outbidding
  10. moral panic
  11. moral panics

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: moral of the story (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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