virtue
Americannoun
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moral excellence; goodness; righteousness.
- Antonyms:
- vice
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conformity of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles; uprightness; rectitude.
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chastity; virginity.
to lose one's virtue.
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a particular moral excellence.
-
a good or admirable quality or property.
the virtue of knowing one's weaknesses.
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effective force; power or potency.
a charm with the virtue of removing warts.
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virtues, an order of angels.
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manly excellence; valor.
idioms
-
make a virtue of necessity, to make the best of a difficult or unsatisfactory situation.
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by / in virtue of, by reason of; because of.
to act by virtue of one's legitimate authority.
noun
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the quality or practice of moral excellence or righteousness
-
a particular moral excellence
the virtue of tolerance
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any of the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) or theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity)
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any admirable quality, feature, or trait
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chastity, esp in women
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archaic an effective, active, or inherent power or force
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on account of or by reason of
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to acquiesce in doing something unpleasant with a show of grace because one must do it in any case
Related Words
See goodness.
Other Word Forms
- nonvirtue noun
- virtueless adjective
- virtuelessness noun
Etymology
Origin of virtue
First recorded in 1175–1225; alteration (with i from Latin ) of Middle English vertu, from Anglo-French, Old French from Latin virtūt-, stem of virtūs “maleness, worth, virtue,” equivalent to vir “man” + -tūs, abstract noun suffix; virile
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.
The main complaint was the “additional workflow burden” experienced by the users — an indication that whatever the virtues of the new technology, they didn’t outweigh the time and effort needed to use them.
From Los Angeles Times
"The virtue of having a republic in Australia is that it emphasises the thing we have in common as Australians."
From Barron's
“The virtue of the matching market is that you can take the good side of a bad bet—someone else’s bad bet,” Cole said.
Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas also questions whether who inherit rulership deserve that duty, reflecting their cravenness in shining gleam of its heroes’ virtue.
From Salon
“For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious.”
From Los Angeles Times
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.
