"oughtness" meaning in English

See oughtness in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: oughtnesses [plural]
Etymology: From ought + -ness. Etymology templates: {{suffix|en|ought|ness}} ought + -ness Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} oughtness (countable and uncountable, plural oughtnesses)
  1. (chiefly philosophy) In ethics, the quality which makes an action dutiful or morally obligatory. Tags: countable, uncountable Categories (topical): Philosophy
    Sense id: en-oughtness-en-noun-qB5BxxAj Topics: human-sciences, philosophy, sciences
  2. (rare) The state or characteristic of something's being as it ought to be; rightness. Tags: countable, rare, uncountable
    Sense id: en-oughtness-en-noun-UFUcPYnp
  3. (rare) The obligatoriness of future actions or future states of affairs which are morally worthy of being produced through human effort. Tags: countable, rare, uncountable
    Sense id: en-oughtness-en-noun-rGUUgAko Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English terms suffixed with -ness Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 24 4 72 Disambiguation of English terms suffixed with -ness: 33 11 56

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for oughtness meaning in English (3.6kB)

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          "ref": "1886, William Mitchell, “Moral Obligation”, in Mind, volume 11, number 41, page 40",
          "text": "Every attempt to derive oughtness from rightness must, as we have shown, either end in an illogical system or destroy the possibility of a separate science of Ethics at all.",
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          "ref": "1958, Archie J. Bahm, “Aesthetic Experience and Moral Experience”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 55, number 20, page 840",
          "text": "Oughtness, may I suggest, consists in the power which a greater good has over a lesser good in compelling our choices.",
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          "ref": "2002, Roberta L. Coles, “Manifest Destiny Adapted for 1990s' War Discourse”, in Sociology of Religion, volume 63, number 4, page 415",
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          "ref": "1964 December 10, Martin Luther King, Jr., Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize",
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}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-29 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (9d9fc81 and db5a844). 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.

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