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Moral vs Principle - What's the difference?

moral | principle |

As nouns the difference between moral and principle

is that moral is moral while 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.

moral

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behaviour, especially for teaching right behaviour.
  • * Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • She had wandered without rule or guidance in a moral wilderness.
  • Conforming to a standard of right behaviour; sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment.
  • * Sir M. Hale
  • the wiser and more moral part of mankind
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 , passage=The stories did not seem to me to touch life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.}}
  • Capable of right and wrong action.
  • Probable but not proved.
  • Positively affecting the mind, confidence, or will.
  • Synonyms

    * (conforming to a standard of right behaviour) ethical, incorruptible, noble, righteous, virtuous * (probable but not proved) virtual

    Antonyms

    * immoral, amoral, non-moral, unmoral

    Derived terms

    * moral compass * moral high ground * moral minimum

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (of a narrative) The ethical significance or practical lesson.
  • The moral of the (The Boy Who Cried Wolf) is that if you repeatedly lie, people won't believe you when you tell the truth.
  • * Macaulay
  • We protest against the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral enters.
  • Moral practices or teachings: modes of conduct.
  • (obsolete) A morality play.
  • Synonyms

    * (moral practices or teachings) ethics, mores

    Hyponyms

    * golden rule

    Anagrams

    * ----

    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.