dignity

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dignity

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• dignitie (obsolete)

Inherited from Middle English dignyte, from Old French dignité, from Latin dignitās (“worthiness, merit, dignity, grandeur, authority, rank, office”), from dignus (“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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɪɡnɪti/

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dignity (countable and uncountable, plural dignities)

1. 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.  In Four Volumes.">…], volume I, London: ">…] 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.

2. 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.

3. High office, rank, or station.
   • c. 1587–1588, , 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.

4. 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.

5. (obsolete) Fundamental principle; axiom; maxim.
   • 1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica:  Together with Some Marginall Observations, and a Table Alphabeticall at the End.">…], 2nd edition, London: A Miller, for Edw Dod and Nath Ekins, , →OCLC:

     Sciences concluding from dignities, and principles known by themselves.

• “dignity”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E Smith, editors (1911), “dignity”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

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