dignity
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English
Alternative forms
- dignitie (obsolete)
Etymology
From Middle English dignyte, from Old French dignité, from Latin dīgnitās (“worthiness, merit, dignity, grandeur, authority, rank, office”), from dīgnus (“worthy, appropriate”), from Proto-Italic *degnos, from Proto-Indo-European *dḱ-nos, from *deḱ- (“to take”). See also decus (“honor, esteem”) and decet (“it is fitting”). Cognate to deign. Doublet of dainty. In this sense, displaced native Old English weorþsċipe, which became Modern English worship.
Pronunciation
Noun
dignity (countable and uncountable, plural dignities)
- The state of being dignified or worthy of esteem: elevation of mind or character.
- 1751 December (indicated as 1752), Henry Fielding, chapter VIII, in Amelia. , volume I, London: [William Strahan] for A Millar , →OCLC:
- 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.
- Decorum, formality, stateliness.
- 1905, E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread , chapter 7, third paragraph:
- The reception room was sacred to the dead wife. Her shiny portrait hung upon the wall - similar, doubtless, in all respects to the one which would be pasted on her tombstone. A little piece of black drapery had been tacked above the frame to lend a dignity to woe. But two of the tacks had fallen out, and the effect was now rakish, as that of a drunkard's bonnet.
- 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.
- High office, rank, or station.
- c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. The First Part , 2nd edition, part 1, London: Richard Iones, , published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:
- Note the preſumption of this Scythian ſlaue:
I tel thee villaine, thoſe that lead my horſe
Haue to their names tytles of dignitie,
And dar’ſt thou bluntly cal me Baiazeth?
- 1611, The Holy Bible, (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Esther 6:3:
- And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this?
- 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.
- One holding high rank; a dignitary.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Jude 1:8:
- These filthy dreamers […] speak evil of dignities.
- (obsolete) Fundamental principle; axiom; maxim.
- 1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: , 2nd edition, London: A Miller, for Edw Dod and Nath Ekins, , →OCLC:
- Sciences concluding from dignities, and principles known by themselves.
Synonyms
Coordinate terms
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
quality or state
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formality, stateliness
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high office or rank
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See also
- “dignity”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “dignity”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.