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Duty vs Principle - What's the difference?

duty | principle |

As an adjective duty

is hollow (having an empty space inside).

As a noun principle is

a fundamental assumption.

As a verb principle is

to equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet or rule of conduct.

duty

English

Noun

(duties)
  • That which one is morally or legally obligated to do.
  • :
  • *1805 , 21 October,
  • *:England expects that every man will do his duty .
  • *
  • *:Captain Edward Carlisle; he could not tell what this prisoner might do. He cursed the fate which had assigned such a duty , cursed especially that fate which forced a gallant soldier to meet so superb a woman as this under handicap so hard.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1959, author=(Georgette Heyer), title=(The Unknown Ajax), chapter=1
  • , passage=Charles had not been employed above six months at Darracott Place, but he was not such a whopstraw as to make the least noise in the performance of his duties when his lordship was out of humour.}}
  • *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington
  • , title= Keeping the mighty honest , passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}
  • A period of time spent at work or doing a particular task.
  • :
  • Describing a workload as to its idle, working and de-energized periods.
  • A tax placed on imports or exports; a tariff.
  • (lb) One's due, something one is owed; a debt or fee.
  • *1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , (w) XX:
  • *:Take that which is thy duty , and goo thy waye.
  • (lb) Respect; reverence; regard; act of respect; homage.
  • *(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)
  • *:my duty to you
  • The efficiency of an engine, especially a steam pumping engine, as measured by work done by a certain quantity of fuel; usually, the number of pounds of water lifted one foot by one bushel of coal (94 lbs. old standard), or by 1 cwt. (112 lbs., England, or 100 lbs., United States).
  • Usage notes

    * Adjectives often used with "duty": public, private, moral, legal, social, double, civic, contractual, political, judicial, etc.

    Synonyms

    * (that which one is obligated to do) obligation

    Antonyms

    * duty-free (taxes) * (that which one is obligated to do) right

    Derived terms

    * active duty * chimney-duty * civic duty * death duty * Delivered Duty Paid * Delivered Duty Unpaid * dutiable * dutiful * duty-bound * duty calls * duty cycle * duty of care * estate duty * excise duty * export duty * fatigue duty * fiduciary duty * filial duty * heavy-duty * import duty * jury duty * legal duty * light-duty * line of duty * neglect duty * on duty * off duty * point duty * sea duty/sea-duty * shore duty * stamp duty * succession duty * tonnage duty * tour of duty

    Statistics

    *

    principle

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A fundamental assumption.
  • * {{quote-web, date=2011-07-20, author=Edwin Mares, site=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, title= Propositional Functions
  • , accessdate = 2012-07-15}}
    Let us consider ‘my dog is asleep on the floor’ again. Frege thinks that this sentence can be analyzed in various different ways. Instead of treating it as expressing the application of __ is asleep on the floor'' to ''my dog'', we can think of it as expressing the application of the concept
         ''my dog is asleep on __''
    to the object
         ''the floor''
    (see Frege 1919). Frege recognizes what is now a commonplace in the logical analysis of natural language. ''We can attribute more than one logical form to a single sentence
    . Let us call this the principle of multiple analyses . Frege does not claim that the principle always holds, but as we shall see, modern type theory does claim this.
  • A rule used to choose among solutions to a problem.
  • (usually, in the plural) Moral rule or aspect.
  • (physics) A rule or law of nature, or the basic idea on how the laws of nature are applied.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Sarah Glaz
  • , title= Ode to Prime Numbers , volume=101, issue=4, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles , attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.}}
  • A fundamental essence, particularly one producing a given quality.
  • * Gregory
  • Cathartine is the bitter, purgative principle of senna.
  • (obsolete) A beginning.
  • * (Edmund Spenser)
  • Doubting sad end of principle unsound.
  • A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause.
  • * Tillotson
  • The soul of man is an active principle .
  • An original faculty or endowment.
  • * Stewart
  • those active principles whose direct and ultimate object is the communication either of enjoyment or suffering

    Usage notes

    Principle is always a noun ("moral rule"), but it is often confused with (principal), which can be an adjective ("most important") or a noun ("school principal"). Consult both definitions if in doubt. Incorrect usage: * He is the principle musician in the band * She worked ten years as school principle A mnemonic to avoid this confusion is "The principal'' alphabetic ''principle'' places ''A'' before ''E ".

    Synonyms

    * (moral rule or aspect) tenet

    Derived terms

    * agreement in principle * anthropic principle * Aufbau principle * Bernoulli's principle * correspondence principle * cosmological principle * Dilbert principle * dormitive principle * equivalence principle * extractive principle * first principles * Huygens' principle * IBM Pollyanna Principle * Le Chatelier's principle * Mach's principle * matter of principle * Matthew principle * Mitchell principle * on principle * Pareto principle * Pauli exclusion principle * Peter principle * pigeonhole principle * precautionary principle * principle of least action * principle of substitutivity * principled stance * programming principle * reciprocity principle * strong equivalence principle * superposition principle * uncertainty principle * verifiability principle

    Verb

  • To equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet or rule of conduct.
  • * L'Estrange
  • Governors should be well principled .
  • * Locke
  • Let an enthusiast be principled that he or his teacher is inspired.