• Dignity

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /ˈdɪɡnɪti/

    Origin

    From Middle English dignitee, from Old French dignite, from Latin dignitas ("worthiness, merit, dignity, grandeur, authority, rank, office"), from dignus ("worthy, appropriate"), from Proto-Indo-European *deḱ-no, from *deḱ- ("to take"), same source as decus ("honor, esteem") and decet ("it is fitting"). Cognate to deign.

    Full definition of dignity

    Noun

    dignity

    (plural dignities)
    1. A quality or state worthy of esteem and respect.
      • 1752, Henry Fielding, Amelia, I. viiiHe uttered this ... with great majesty, or, as he called it, dignity.
      • 1981, African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, art. 5Every 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.Dignity of Plants
    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.Columbia World of Quotations 1996.
    3. High office, rank, or station.
      • 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.
      • MacaulayAnd the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this?
    4. One holding high rank; a dignitary.
      • Bible, Jude 8.These filthy dreamers ... speak evil of dignities.
    5. (obsolete) Fundamental principle; axiom; maxim.
      • Sir Thomas BrowneSciences concluding from dignities, and principles known by themselves.

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