moral authority
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.30 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Of a person, institution, or written work, the quality or characteristic of being respected for having good character or knowledge, especially as a source of guidance or an exemplar of proper conduct.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The people adopted the government they had framed, and thus gave it its moral authority."
- "There was an essay . . . devoted to a consideration of the many questions which must be reopened and reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the Church of England were to cease to carry moral authority."
- "While the Dalai Lama is lauded in much of the world as a figure of moral authority, Beijing reviles the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate."
- "At first Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Booker as a moral authority for King's ethic of love and his posture of passive resistance to white hatred."
- "No less a moral authority than Elie Wiesel, the celebrated holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, urged President Bush to invade Iraq to defend freedom and liberate the Iraqi people."
- "Santa is not only a moral authority, like a strict father, but he is also like a nurturing parent, traditionally, a mother."