morality

Noun

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.
   • 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.1840 May, Thomas Carlyle, “(please specify the page)”, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship and The Heroic in History, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1840, →OCLC
   • 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.1910 November, Jack London, “Actors’ Description of Characters”, in Theft: A Play in Four Acts, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page x

   Synonyms:

   decency, rectitude, righteousness, uprightness, virtuousness

2. (countable) A set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct.
   • I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality.1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, Act V, page 173
   • 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."1917, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 14, in The Yukon Trail

   Synonyms:

   conventions, morals, mores

3. (countable) A set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether respectable or not.
   • His morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions.1781, Samuel Johnson, “Sheffield”, in Lives of the Poets
   • Deputy District Attorney Bill Tingle called Jones "the devil's right-hand man" and said he should be punished for his "atrocious morality."1994 November 4, “Man Convicted of Murder in '92 Bludgeoning”, in San Jose Mercury News, page 2B

   Synonyms:

   morals

4. (archaic, countable) A lesson or pronouncement which contains advice about proper behavior.
   • "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.1824, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 16, in St. Ronan's Well
   • What mean these stale moralities, / Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble?1882, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanitas Vanitatum”, in Ballads, page 195

   Synonyms:

   homily

5. (countable) A morality play.
   • The Moralities displayed something more of art and invention than the Mysteries; in them virtues, vices and qualities were personified, and something like a plot was frequently to be discovered.1862, George Borrow, Wild Wales
6. (rare, uncountable) Moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy which studies the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.
   • 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".1953, J. Kemp, “Review of The Claim of Morality by N.H.G. Robinson”, in The Philosophical Quarterly, volume 3, number 12, page 278

   Synonyms:

   ethics, moral philosophy

7. (countable, rare) A particular theory concerning the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.
   • Hume's morality which ‘implies some sentiment common to all mankind’; Kant's morality for all rational beings; Butler's morality with its presupposition of ‘uniformity of conscience’.1954, Bernard Mayo, “Ethics and Moral Controversy”, in The Philosophical Quarterly, volume 4, number 14, page 11

   Synonyms:

   ethics, moral philosophy