"moral high ground" meaning in English

See moral high ground in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˌmɔɹəl ˈhaɪ ɡɹaʊnd/ [US] Audio: En-au-moral high ground.ogg Forms: moral high grounds [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|head=moral high ground}} moral high ground (plural moral high grounds)
  1. (idiomatic) A position or point of view which is ethically superior or more reputable, in comparison to others which are under consideration. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: high ground Translations (A position or point of view): 道德制高點 (Chinese Mandarin), 道德制高点 (dàodézhìgāodiǎn) (Chinese Mandarin), 道德高地 (dàodégāodì) (Chinese Mandarin), korkeamoraalinen näkökanta (Finnish), hurskasteleva näkökanta (Finnish), wyższość moralna [feminine] (Polish)

Inflected forms

{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "moral low ground"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "moral high grounds",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "moral high ground"
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      "expansion": "moral high ground (plural moral high grounds)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Mandarin terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
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        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Mandarin translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Polish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 May 6, Robert Horn, “The Next Face-Off”, in Time, archived from the original on 2010-10-22:",
          "text": "Her legitimacy (as the leader of the party that won the 1990 general election), integrity and stoic acceptance of house arrest enable her to occupy the moral high ground.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 July 8, Sara Jacobs, quotee, “Biden approves cluster bombs for Ukraine”, in FT Weekend, page 4:",
          "text": "Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat on the House armed services committee, said the US should not “cede the moral high ground”.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A position or point of view which is ethically superior or more reputable, in comparison to others which are under consideration."
      ],
      "id": "en-moral_high_ground-en-noun-bG09zU1f",
      "links": [
        [
          "point of view",
          "point of view"
        ],
        [
          "ethical",
          "ethical"
        ],
        [
          "superior",
          "superior"
        ],
        [
          "reputable",
          "reputable"
        ],
        [
          "comparison",
          "comparison"
        ],
        [
          "consideration",
          "consideration"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A position or point of view which is ethically superior or more reputable, in comparison to others which are under consideration."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "high ground"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "A position or point of view",
          "word": "道德制高點"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "dàodézhìgāodiǎn",
          "sense": "A position or point of view",
          "word": "道德制高点"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "dàodégāodì",
          "sense": "A position or point of view",
          "word": "道德高地"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "A position or point of view",
          "word": "korkeamoraalinen näkökanta"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "A position or point of view",
          "word": "hurskasteleva näkökanta"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "A position or point of view",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "wyższość moralna"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌmɔɹəl ˈhaɪ ɡɹaʊnd/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
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      "audio": "En-au-moral high ground.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3f/En-au-moral_high_ground.ogg/En-au-moral_high_ground.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/En-au-moral_high_ground.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "moral high ground"
}
{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "moral low ground"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "moral high grounds",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
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  ],
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      "args": {
        "head": "moral high ground"
      },
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "high ground"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
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        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Mandarin terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Finnish translations",
        "Terms with Mandarin translations",
        "Terms with Polish translations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 May 6, Robert Horn, “The Next Face-Off”, in Time, archived from the original on 2010-10-22:",
          "text": "Her legitimacy (as the leader of the party that won the 1990 general election), integrity and stoic acceptance of house arrest enable her to occupy the moral high ground.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 July 8, Sara Jacobs, quotee, “Biden approves cluster bombs for Ukraine”, in FT Weekend, page 4:",
          "text": "Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat on the House armed services committee, said the US should not “cede the moral high ground”.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A position or point of view which is ethically superior or more reputable, in comparison to others which are under consideration."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "point of view",
          "point of view"
        ],
        [
          "ethical",
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        ],
        [
          "superior",
          "superior"
        ],
        [
          "reputable",
          "reputable"
        ],
        [
          "comparison",
          "comparison"
        ],
        [
          "consideration",
          "consideration"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A position or point of view which is ethically superior or more reputable, in comparison to others which are under consideration."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌmɔɹəl ˈhaɪ ɡɹaʊnd/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-moral high ground.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3f/En-au-moral_high_ground.ogg/En-au-moral_high_ground.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/En-au-moral_high_ground.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "A position or point of view",
      "word": "道德制高點"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "dàodézhìgāodiǎn",
      "sense": "A position or point of view",
      "word": "道德制高点"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "dàodégāodì",
      "sense": "A position or point of view",
      "word": "道德高地"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "A position or point of view",
      "word": "korkeamoraalinen näkökanta"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "A position or point of view",
      "word": "hurskasteleva näkökanta"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "A position or point of view",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "wyższość moralna"
    }
  ],
  "word": "moral high ground"
}

Download raw JSONL data for moral high ground meaning in English (3.0kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.