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The act of edifying, or the state of being edified; a building up, especially in a moral or spiritual sense; moral, intellectual, or spiritual improvement; instruction. The assured edification of his church. Bp. Hall. Out of these magazines I shall supply the town with what may tend to their edification. Addison.…

One who edifies, builds up, or strengthens another by moral or religious instruction.

To instruct and improve, especially in moral and religious knowledge; to teach. It does not appear probable that our dispute [about miracles] would either edify or enlighten the public. Gibbon.

A picture accompanied with a motto, a set of verse, or the like, intended as a moral lesson or meditation.

a place or station above men in general, either in rank, office, or celebrity; social or moral loftiness; high rank; distinction; preferment. Milton. You 've too a woman's heart, which ever yet Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty. Shak.

To give moral or physical power, faculties, or abilities to. "These eyes . . . empowered to gaze." Keble.

ce, strength, or courage; to render feeble or impotent; to make effeminate; to impair the moral powers of. A man . . . enervated by licentiousness. Macaulay. And rhyme began t' enervate poetry. Dryden.

Without mixture or alloy of anything; unqualified; morally whole; pure; faithful. Pure fear and entire cowardice. Shak. No man had ever a heart more entire to the king. Clarendon.

des of a thing are balanced, and hence equal; state of being equally balanced; -- said of moral, political, or social interests or forces. The means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth. Burke. Our little lives are kept in equipoise By opposite attractions and desires. Longfellow.…

To deviate morally from the right way; to go astray, in a figurative sense; to do wrong; to sin. Do they not err that devise evil Prov. xiv. 22.

A moral offense; violation of duty; a sin or transgression; iniquity; fault. Ps. xix. 12.

nion of the value of, from imperfect data, -- either the extrinsic (money), or intrinsic (moral), value; to fix the worth of roughly or in a general way; as, to estimate the value of goods or land; to estimate the worth or talents of a person. It is by the weight of silver, and not the name of the piece, that men estim…

without using precise data; valuation; as, estimations of distance, magnitude, amount, or moral qualities. If he be poorer that thy estimation, then he shall present himself before the priest, and the priest, and the priest shall value him. Lev. xxvii. 8.

In an eternal manner. That which is morally good or evil at any time or in any case, must be also eternally and unchangeably so. South. Where western gales eternally reside. Addison.

Of, or belonging to, morals; treating of the moral feelings or duties; containing percepts of morality; moral; as, ethic discourses or epistles; an ethical system; ethical philosophy. The ethical meaning of the miracles. Trench. Ethical dative (Gram.), a use of the dative of a pronoun to signify that the person or thin…

According to, in harmony with, moral principles or character.

; as, political or social ethics; medical ethics. The completeness and consistency of its morality is the peculiar praise of the ethics which the Bible has taught. I. Taylor.

treating of, or pertaining to, ethnic or morality, or the science of character. J. S. Mill.

A treatise on morality; ethics.

That part of moral philosophy which treats of happiness; the science of happiness; -- contrasted with aretaics. J. Grote.