dignity

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[edit] English

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[edit] Etymology

From Middle English dignitee < Old French dignite < Latin dignitas (worthiness, merit, dignity, grandeur, authority, rank, office) < dignus (worthy, appropriate), probably akin to decus (honor, esteem) and decet (it is fitting).

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[edit] Noun

Singular
dignity

Plural
dignities

dignity (plural dignities)

  1. A quality or state worthy of esteem and respect, especially humanness, but also, for example, augustness, nobility, majesty, grandeur, glory, superiority, wonderfulness
    • 1752, Henry Fielding, Amelia, 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.[1]
  2. 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.[2]
  3. high office or rank;
    • 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.

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[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Notes:
  1. ^ Dignity of Plants
  2. ^ Columbia World of Quotations 1996.

[edit] Anagrams