Definition of "morality"

morality

/məˈɹælɪti/

noun
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.
  Quotations
  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.
  1841, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 3, in Heroes and Hero Worship
  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., page x
  Science and art without morality are not dangerous in the sense commonly supposed. They are not dangerous like a fire, but dangerous like a fog.
  1911, G. K. Chesterton, chapter 16, in Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
  It may be true that you cannot legislate morality, but behavior can be regulated.
  1965 April 30, “King Moves North”, in Time
2. (countable) A set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct.
  Quotations
  I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality.
  1912, George Bernard Shaw, “Act V”, in Pygmalion‎
  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
3. (countable) A set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether respectable or not.
  Quotations
  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
4. (countable, archaic) A lesson or pronouncement which contains advice about proper behavior.
  Quotations
  "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
5. (countable) A morality play.
6. (uncountable, rare) Moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy which studies the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.
  Quotations
  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
7. (countable, rare) A particular theory concerning the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.
  Quotations
  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