Noun

(-)

Absence of responsibility for a crime.

Lack of understanding about sensitive subjects such as sexuality and crime.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=9 citation , passage=Eustace gaped at him in amazement. When his urbanity dropped away from him, as now, he had an innocence of expression which was almost infantile. It was as if the world had never touched him at all.}}

Lack of ability or intention to harm or damage.

Noun

(dignities)

A quality or state worthy of esteem and respect.

* 1752 , (Henry Fielding), , I. viii

He uttered this ... with great majesty, or, as he called it, dignity .

* 1981 , African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights , art. 5

Every individual shall have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being.

* 2008 , Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) [Switzerland]

'The dignity' of living beings with regard to plants: Moral consideration of plants for their own sake', 3: ... the ECNH has been expected to make proposals from an ethical perspective to concretise the constitutional term ' dignity of living beings with regard to plants. Dignity of Plants

Decorum, formality, stateliness.

* 1934 , Aldous Huxley, "Puerto Barrios", in Beyond the Mexique Bay :

Official DIGNITY tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.Columbia World of Quotations 1996.

High office, rank, or station.

* 1781 , Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , F. III. 231:

He ... distributed the civil and military dignities among his favourites and followers.

* Macaulay

And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this?

One holding high rank; a dignitary.

* Bible, Jude 8.

These filthy dreamers speak evil of dignities .

(obsolete) Fundamental principle; axiom; maxim.

* Sir Thomas Browne

Sciences concluding from dignities , and principles known by themselves.