Other forms: virtues
A virtue is a morally excellent quality, such as honesty or courage. The virtue of patience, a life of virtue, her chief virtue.
It also means a good point or advantage in something not moral at all: the virtue of the design is its simplicity. By virtue of is a formal phrase meaning because of. Note virtuous, meaning morally good; virtue signalling, a modern and hostile term for displaying moral opinions for approval; and that make a virtue of necessity means to claim credit for doing what you had no choice about.
1nounvirtueA morally excellent quality.
“Patience was not among his virtues.”
2noungoodA good point or advantage.
“The virtue of the design is that anybody can repair it.”
virtue is a good quality.
Latin virtus meant manliness and courage, from vir, a man — the same vir as in virile. The Romans meant the qualities of a soldier; Christian writers redirected it to moral goodness, which is where English found it.
Latin
virtus — manliness, bravery, worth, moral excellence
Anglo-Norman
vertu
Middle English
vertu
English, today
virtue
Built from
From Middle English vertu, virtue, borrowed from Anglo-Norman vertu, virtu, from Latin virtus (“manliness, bravery, worth, moral excellence”), from vir (“man”). a doublet of vertu. See virile. In this sense, displaced cræft, whence Modern English craft.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA