Search the Dictionary

Committed with, or proceedings from, daring effrontery or contempt of law, morality, or decorum. "Audacious cruelty." "Audacious prate." Shak.

Reckless daring; presumptuous impudence; -- implying a contempt of law or moral restraints. With the most arrogant audacity. Joye.

rom opinion, respect, or esteem; influence of character, office, or station, or mental or moral superiority, and the like; claim to be believed or obeyed; as, an historian of no authority; a magistrate of great authority.

The sovereignty of reason in the sphere of morals; or man's power, as possessed of reason, to give law to himself. In this, according to Kant, consist the true nature and only possible proof of liberty. Fleming.

Idle talk; senseless prattle; gabble; twaddle. "This is mere moral babble." Milton.

Firmness; moral principle; steadfastness. Shelley's thought never had any backbone. Shairp. To the backbone, through and through; thoroughly; entirely. "Staunch to the backbone." Lord Lytton.

Wanting good qualities, whether physical or moral; injurious, hurtful, inconvenient, offensive, painful, unfavorable, or defective, either physically or morally; evil; vicious; wicked; -- the opposite of good; as a bad man; bad conduct; bad habits; bad soil; bad health; bad crop; bad news.

A woman of loose morals; a prostitute. A disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage. Thackeray.

To keep steady; to steady, morally. 'T is charity must ballast the heart. Hammond.

Morally low. Hence: Low-minded; unworthy; without dignity of sentiment; ignoble; mean; illiberal; menial; as, a base fellow; base motives; base occupations. "A cruel act of a base and a cowardish mind." Robynson (More's Utopia). "Base ingratitude." Milton.

A conception or image of consummate beauty, moral or physical, formed in the mind, free from all the deformities, defects, and blemishes seen in actual existence; an ideal or faultless standard or model.

s or properties pleasing to the eye, the ear, the intellect, the æsthetic faculty, or the moral sense. Beauty consists of a certain composition of color and figure, causing delight in the beholder. Locke. The production of beauty by a multiplicity of symmetrical parts uniting in a consistent whole. Wordsworth. The old…

To make little or less in a moral sense; to speak of in a depreciatory or contemptuous way. T. Jefferson.

To involve in moral darkness, or ignorance; to debar from intellectual light. Shall we to men benighted The lamp of life deny Heber.

t phase of the doctrine of utilitarianism taught by Jeremy Bentham; the doctrine that the morality of actions is estimated and determined by their utility; also, the theory that the sensibility to pleasure and the recoil from pain are the only motives which influence human desires and actions, and that these are the su…

A treatise on beasts; esp., one of the moralizing or allegorical beast tales written in the Middle Ages.

To improve the condition of, morally, physically, financially, socially, or otherwise. The constant effort of every man to better himself. Macaulay.

Hence: Morally distorted; not upright. [Poetic] I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel. Shak. A bevel angle, any angle other than one of 90º. -- Bevel wheel, a cogwheel whose working face is oblique to the axis. Knight.

g the mind indifferent; bent inclination. Strong love is a bias upon the thoughts. South. Morality influences men's lives, and gives a bias to all their actions. Locke.

se, a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own, as in politics or morals; one obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion. To doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and believe. Macaulay.