piety
Americannoun
-
pieties
plural
-
reverence for God or devout fulfillment of religious obligations.
a prayer full of piety.
- Synonyms:
- awe, veneration, respect
-
the quality or state of being pious.
saintly piety.
- Synonyms:
- holiness, sanctity, devoutness, devotion, godliness
-
dutiful respect or regard for parents, homeland, etc..
filial piety.
-
a pious act, remark, belief, or the like.
the pieties and sacrifices of an austere life.
noun
-
dutiful devotion to God and observance of religious principles
-
the quality or characteristic of being pious
-
a pious action, saying, etc
-
rare devotion and obedience to parents or superiors
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of piety
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English piete, from Middle French, from Latin pietās, equivalent to pi(us) + -etās, variant (after i ) of -itās; see pious, -ity
Explanation
Piety is devotion to God or to religious practices. Nuns who pray all day long are famous for their piety. If you have filial piety it means you're devoted to your parents. Piety is sometimes used in a disapproving way to mean that the person is only pretending to be devoted or good. It was borrowed from the French word pieté, meaning "piety or pity," ultimately from the Latin pius, "devoted, kind." This Latin adjective is also the source of our English adjective pious.
Vocabulary lists containing piety
The Poet X
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"The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving
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Unit 4: Powerful Openings
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
These include its “language of righteousness, of piety, of guilt, of sin,” along with “orthodoxies, credos, purity tests and jargon.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
The discussions range from people frustrated with controlling parents, to those exhausted from the pressure to excel academically or heed advice in the name of "filial piety".
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
Soo’s Bonnie sweetly embodies the excesses of a kind of progressive piety.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 21, 2026
The shift from politics to piety is not just thematic.
From Salon ● Apr. 18, 2026
“Go to his master. Hubert’s wisdom and piety are famous across Christendom. I’m bringing some books to him anyway. Come with me, and we’ll tell him all about the crimes of the wicked Michelangelo.”
From "The Inquisitor's Tale" by Adam Gidwitz
Much of the public wanted a different take on war - and one that challenged solemn pieties at the heart of Official Remembrance.
From BBC ● Nov. 10, 2025
“Punch” could easily have become a bog of pieties and earnest, uplifting lessons about the necessity of forgiveness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2025
Bakewell describes how he “trashes all the humanistic pieties on the subject of reading,” defending, for example, the right to unapologetically toss a dull book aside.
From New York Times ● Apr. 2, 2023
Baudelaire's Poe valued beauty over truth in his poetry and, in his fiction, saw through the self-improvement pieties that were popular at the time to reveal "the natural wickedness of man."
From Salon ● Jan. 21, 2023
But how dare her lady-fingered pieties extend to my life!
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
