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)- 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 - 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.
- 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?
- One holding high rank; a dignitary.
- Bible, Jude 8.These filthy dreamers ... speak evil of dignities.
- (obsolete) Fundamental principle; axiom; maxim.
- Sir Thomas BrowneSciences concluding from dignities, and principles known by themselves.