MORALITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does morality mean? 

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

1. concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct

2. motivation based on ideas of right and wrong

  Familiarity information: MORALITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MORALITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

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

quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)

Attribute:

moral (concerned with principles of right and wrong or conforming to standards of behavior and character based on those principles)

immoral (deliberately violating accepted principles of right and wrong)

pure ((used of persons or behaviors) having no faults; sinless)

impure ((used of persons or behaviors) immoral or obscene)

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

righteousness (adhering to moral principles)

rightness (according with conscience or morality)

conscience (conformity to one's own sense of right conduct)

good; goodness (moral excellence or admirableness)

chastity; sexual morality; virtue (morality with respect to sexual relations)

Antonym:

immorality (the quality of not being in accord with standards of right or good conduct)

Derivation:

moral (concerned with principles of right and wrong or conforming to standards of behavior and character based on those principles)

moralistic (narrowly and conventionally moral)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Motivation based on ideas of right and wrong

Classified under:

Nouns denoting goals

Synonyms:

ethical motive; ethics; morality; morals

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

motivation; motive; need (the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior)

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

hedonism (the pursuit of pleasure as a matter of ethical principle)

conscience; moral sense; scruples; sense of right and wrong (motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions)

Christ Within; Inner Light; Light; Light Within (a divine presence believed by Quakers to enlighten and guide the soul)

Derivation:

moralistic (narrowly and conventionally moral)

 Context examples 

You can't get away from them, and you'll have to swallow the whole slave-morality.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

That's a nice sort of morality.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I have perused many of their books, especially those in history and morality.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In the height of her morality, good woman! she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

We do not look in great cities for our best morality.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the "science of morality".

(Ethics, NCI Thesaurus)

Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and human nature; and had some extracts to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to listen to.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Hump, he said slowly, you can’t do it. You are not exactly afraid. You are impotent. Your conventional morality is stronger than you.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)