noun
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the quality, character, or state of being immoral
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immoral behaviour, esp in sexual matters; licentiousness; profligacy or promiscuity
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an immoral act
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of immorality
Explanation
Immorality is evil, sinful, or otherwise wrong behavior. Immorality is often called wickedness and is a state avoided by good people. Since morality refers to things that are right, immorality has to do with things that are wrong — like stealing, lying, and murdering. This is a tricky word, because people have their own idea of what's immoral. We can all agree killing is an example of immorality, but people disagree on whether things such as bad language are truly signs of immorality. Different religions have their own ideas of immorality too, but the word is always associated with wrongness and offensiveness.
Vocabulary lists containing immorality
Kindred
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Class Matters
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Speeches 2A
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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:
A universal standard for immorality in art may be an impossibility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said that intelligence agencies had been ordered to identify and report on what he called "organised trends promoting immorality and non-veiling".
From BBC ● Dec. 6, 2025
In its famous showstopper, “Ya Got Trouble,” con man Harold Hill warns the River City townsfolk about supposed dens of immorality, and the children notice Matty in the crowd, holding a bundle.
From Salon ● Nov. 9, 2025
Throughout the film, several characters, namely Lucy Gray and Sejanus, try to convince those around them of the immorality of the Hunger Games.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 17, 2023
The immorality of the bantustan policy, whereby 70 percent of the people would be apportioned only 13 percent of the land, was obvious.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
For all the brazen immoralities and the raunchy jokes that jam her scripts, Ms. Headland, who had a strict Catholic upbringing, remains a deeply moral writer.
From New York Times ● Aug. 18, 2016
A member since 1995, Ms. Adams said the expulsion reflected a change in the group, whose previous dinners were rife, she said, with disturbances and immoralities of various kinds.
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2014
Whatever its immoralities, it commits them on the whole because it enjoys them, and not because it wants to demonstrate against Victorian conventions or shock Babbitt.
From Time Magazine Archive
Moreover let me say that the bill is chiefly an instrument of propaganda designed to persuade the world that Britons are moral by obscuring their immoralities . .. yet I do not object, My Lords.
From Time Magazine Archive
We can endure his cheerful moralities as little as his cheerful immoralities, for both are very closely connected.
From Human, All-Too-Human, Part II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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.
