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 second cost of diversity derives from how employees of color perceive the rightness of their employer’s actions, otherwise known as legitimacy.
From Salon • Apr. 1, 2025
“The one way to preserve and defend a place’s rightness is to inhabit it, intimate, knowledgeable, and vigilant as can be.”
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 8, 2023
I only knew that there was a certain rightness in life—the feeling you got when you did something the way you knew you should.
From "Dragonwings" by Laurence Yep
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.
