Etymologically
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morale

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Pronunciation

Forms

morale m or f by sense (plural morali)[1]

Etymology

It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin mōrālis (“relating to manners or customs”), from mōs (“custom, way of life”).[2][3][4][1] Cicero coined the Latin adjective to render Ancient Greek ἠθικός (ēthikós, “ethical”), and says so himself in his treatise on fate.[2][5][6] The same Latin adjective gave French moral, recorded from the 13th century, and Spanish moral.[3][7]

The feminine noun, moral philosophy or the moral of a story, implies a feminine noun left out: DELI thinks of dottrina (“doctrine”), and Nocentini, for the moral of a tale, of massima (“maxim”) or sentenza (“saying”).[2][3] The masculine noun, a person's spirits, is explained by DELI as an ellipsis of a phrase with spirito, set against the physical, and by Nocentini as a calque of the French masculine noun, short for French état moral (“moral state”) as opposed to the physical state.[2][3]

The Latin noun has no sure cognates outside Latin, and in the Romance languages it survives only in French mœurs (“customs”).[3][8] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *mōs- and finds the meaning close enough to “measure” to derive it from the root Proto-Indo-European *meh₁- (“to measure”).[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Nocentini dates the first record to 1287–1288, and GRADIT and Devoto–Oli to the second half of the 13th century.[3][4][10] The earliest dated uses in DELI are Bono Giamboni's, before 1292, where a morale person is chaste and upright, and the Novellino, at the end of the century, where the word means conforming to what is good and just.[2] Prati also cites the Novellino for the sense “concerning customs”.[11]

Semantic evolution

Dante's Convivio (1304–1308) uses the adjective for whatever concerns life in relation to good and evil, and speaks of la morale dottrina, moral teaching; the noun moralitade appears in the same work.[2][12] The sense “relating to conscience, to the inner life” is recorded in 1569, in the title of a book by Alessandro Piccolomini.[2]

The feminine noun first meant the lesson to be drawn from a story, in Giovanni Sercambi before 1424; it named moral philosophy in Sforza Pallavicino before 1667, and the body of customs and rules that govern life in Marcello Malpighi before 1694.[2] The masculine noun for a person's state of mind is recent: Tommaseo's dictionary has it in 1869, and Giuseppe Mazzini uses it before 1872.[2][3] Today one is su di morale or giù di morale (in good or low spirits), one fa la morale to someone (lectures them), and a story ends with la morale della favola.[4][13] Milan is called the capitale morale of Italy, the city with the authority of a capital without being one.[6]

The derivatives followed the learned history of the word: moralmente is in Boccaccio before 1375, moralizzare in Francesco da Buti before 1406, modelled on French moraliser, immorale from 1726, demoralizzare from French démoraliser before 1802, and moralismo and amorale only at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century.[2][3]

Timeline

  • 1287–1288 – First record of morale, according to Nocentini.[3]
  • Before 1292 – Bono Giamboni uses morale for a chaste, upright person.[2]
  • 1304–1308 – Dante's Convivio uses the adjective for what concerns good and evil.[2]
  • Before 1424 – Giovanni Sercambi uses the feminine noun for the moral of a story.[2]
  • Before 1667 – Sforza Pallavicino uses la morale for moral philosophy.[2]
  • 1726 – Immorale is first recorded.[3]
  • 1869 – The masculine il morale, state of mind, appears in Tommaseo's dictionary.[2][3]
  • 1895 – Amorale is first recorded.[3]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Concerning human conduct in relation to good and evil; ethical: Si tratta di una scelta morale difficile.[4][10][14]
  2. Conforming to the principles a society holds to be right and decent; of a person, upright, honest.[4][10][13]
  3. Concerning the mind and spirit rather than the body or material things: Gli amici le hanno dato un grande sostegno morale.[4][14][6]

Noun (feminine)

  1. Moral philosophy; the doctrine, philosophical or religious, of how people should act; ethics.[4][14]
  2. The set of rules and customs that govern conduct in a society or group; morality.[4][14][6]
  3. The moral of a story or event, the lesson drawn from it: Qual è la morale di tutta questa storia?[4][14]

Noun (masculine)

  1. State of mind, spirits; morale: Dopo la vittoria i giocatori hanno il morale alle stelle.[14][6][1]

Word family

  • moraleggiare
  • moralismo
  • moralista
  • moralistico
  • moralità
  • moralizzare
  • moralizzatore
  • moralizzazione
  • moralmente
  • demoralizzare
  • demoralizzazione
  • amorale
  • immorale

Usage notes

The gender tells the nouns apart: la morale is ethics or the moral of a story, il morale a person's or a group's spirits.[14][1] A minor word morale (also murale), masculine, is a long squared beam in shipbuilding, and in building a batten in the secondary framework of a timber roof, with the derivatives moraletto and moralone.[4][10] It is recorded from 1609, and its origin is uncertain: Devoto–Oli suggests a link with muro, and the GDLI derives it from a Venetian word for a roof batten.[4][10][12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
  7. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2505
  8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
  9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  10. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  11. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 677
  12. ^ a b Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 10, 869
  13. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse