Etymology 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 (ēthikós, “moral”)), from mos (“manner, custom”).
1
Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behaviour, especially conforming to principles of rectitude.
moral judgments; a moral poem
a moral obligation
1 more example
She had wandered without rule or guidance in a moral wilderness.1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:
2
Conforming to a given standard of right behaviour.
a moral action
3
Being sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment.
The stories did not seem to me to touch life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
4
Capable of right and wrong action.
a moral agent
5
Probable but not proved.
a moral certainty
6
Positively affecting the mind, confidence, or will.
Etymology 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 (ēthikós, “moral”)), from mos (“manner, custom”).
1
Of a narrative The ethical significance or practical lesson.
The moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that if you repeatedly lie, people won't believe you when you tell the truth.
We protest against the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral enters.1841, Thomas Macaulay, Comic Dramatists of the Restoration (printed in Edinburgh Review, January 1841)
2
In plural Moral practices or teachings: modes of conduct.
"You'd better not collar anything now, because it's a moral that old Antonio would nip out behind one of those cases."1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 22:
"One thing," added George, after the peculiarities of the situation had been sufficiently admitted, "it's going to be the last time I'm mixed up in what isn't strictly on the level. If we get clear this once with anything like tidy, old girl, it'll be that little cottage with the pigs and poultry for a moral."1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London:
Etymology 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 (ēthikós, “moral”)), from mos (“manner, custom”).