moral

UK/ˈmɒɹəl/US/ˈmoɹəl/

adjectiveB24 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,008 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: morals

Moral is about right and wrong in the way people behave. A moral question — should you keep the wallet you found on the pavement? A moral duty to tell someone the truth even when it costs you something.

Used of a person, moral means acting by those standards: a moral man, a deeply moral decision. The noun is the lesson a story leaves you with — the moral of the story is that greed ends badly — and in the plural, morals are the standards someone lives by. Two set phrases: moral support, which is encouragement rather than help with the lifting, and a moral victory, where you lose but you were right. The opposite is immoral, meaning wrong; amoral is a different thing again, meaning the question never entered the person's head. And keep moral apart from morale, stressed on the second half, which is the spirit of a group of people.

Definitions of moral

1adjectivemoralConcerning what is right and wrong in the way people behave.B2~81%
“The committee faced a difficult moral question.”
synonyms: ethical
2adjectivebehavingBehaving according to standards accepted as right and honest.B2~2%
“He was a moral man who kept his word.”
3nounlessonThe lesson about behaviour that a story teaches.B2~15%
“The moral of the fable is that slow and steady wins.”
4nounlivesStandards of right behaviour that a person lives by.B2~2%
“Her morals would not let her keep the money.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: ethical

Phrases it lives in

moral support — encouragement given to someone rather than practical help
the moral high ground — the position of being clearly in the right in an argument

Where it comes from

Cicero needed a Latin word for the Greek ethikos, so he made one: moralis, from mos, a custom or a way of behaving. The word began life as a translation. Morality started out as nothing grander than what the people around here do.

Latin
mōrālis
Old French
moral
Middle English
moral
English, today
moral

Built from

mos · Latin — manner, custom

From Middle English moral, from Old French moral, from Latin mōrālis. From Middle English moral, from Old French moral, from Latin mōrālis (“relating to manners or morals”) (first used by Cicero, to translate Ancient Greek ἠθικός (“moral”)), from mos (“manner, custom”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives, Myths & Legends, Fairy Tales & Folklore

Practise this word

moral in the wild

Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena.
Ethics
Cross-species and cross-cultural research suggests that attention to moral sentiments exists in all human societies, and that moral sentiments are part of cultural universals.
Morality
A moral is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event.
Moral
A moral is a lesson in a story or real life.
Moral
Many moral skeptics also make the modal claim that moral knowledge is impossible.
Moral skepticism

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the moral family

moral immoral

moral — used about once every 247 pages · #2,008 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of moral

1adjectivemoralConcerning what is right and wrong in the way people behave.B2~81%

“The committee faced a difficult moral question.”

synonyms: ethical

2adjectivebehavingBehaving according to standards accepted as right and honest.B2~2%

“He was a moral man who kept his word.”

3nounlessonThe lesson about behaviour that a story teaches.B2~15%

“The moral of the fable is that slow and steady wins.”

4nounlivesStandards of right behaviour that a person lives by.B2~2%

“Her morals would not let her keep the money.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: ethical