INIQUITY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does iniquity mean? 

• INIQUITY (noun)
  The noun INIQUITY has 2 senses:

1. morally objectionable behavior

2. an unjust act

  Familiarity information: INIQUITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INIQUITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Morally objectionable behavior

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

evil; immorality; iniquity; wickedness

Hypernyms ("iniquity" is a kind of...):

evildoing; transgression (the act of transgressing; the violation of a law or a duty or moral principle)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "iniquity"):

devilry; deviltry (wicked and cruel behavior)

foul play (unfair or dishonest behavior (especially involving violence))

irreverence; violation (a disrespectful act)

sexual immorality (the evil ascribed to sexual acts that violate social conventions)

Derivation:

iniquitous (characterized by iniquity; wicked because it is believed to be a sin)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An unjust act

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

iniquity; injustice; shabbiness; unfairness

Hypernyms ("iniquity" is a kind of...):

actus reus; misconduct; wrongdoing; wrongful conduct (activity that transgresses moral or civil law)

 Context examples 

I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud-dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment—

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, least by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)