rightness
Americannoun
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correctness or accuracy.
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propriety or fitness.
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moral integrity.
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Obsolete. straightness or directness.
noun
Etymology
Origin of rightness
before 950; Middle English; Old English rihtnes. See right, -ness
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.
We tend to believe that legality establishes rightness, establishes legitimacy.
From Slate ● Feb. 3, 2026
The simile is arresting: modern European proponents of welfare-state liberalism likened to a dying class of 19th-century hereditary nobles, confident in their rightness and desperate to rest.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
The sensation of taste and the pleasure food brings versus the maintaining of a sense of rightness in how we pursue these pleasures.
From Salon ● Apr. 28, 2024
For its farewell, Olafsson played it more fluidly, but also with more confidence in the rightness of its hermitage.
From New York Times ● Feb. 8, 2024
There were three signals she must feel: the fitness of her body, the rightness of the environment, and the chill of the atmosphere.
From "Frightful's Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
