different between moralize vs moralism

English

Alternative forms

• moralise

Etymology

From Old French moraliser

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?m?.??.la?z/

Verb

moralize (third-person singular simple present moralizes, present participle moralizing, simple past and past participle moralized)

1. (intransitive) To make moral reflections (on, upon, about or over something); to regard acts and events as involving a moral.
   • 1589, Robert Greene, Menaphon, London: Sampson Clarke, “Arcadia,”^[3]

     […] his Ladie reaching him a Marigold, he began to moralize of it thus merely. I meruaile the Poets that were so prodigall in painting the amorous affection of the Sunne to his Hyacinth, did neuer obserue the relation of loue twixt him and the Marigold:

   • 1741, Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, London: S. Richardson and J. Osborn,, Volume 3, Letter 8, p. 38,^[4]

     […] I shall not make an unworthy Correspondent altogether; for I can get into thy grave Way, and moralize a little now-and-then:

   • 1847, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 17,^[5]

     One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them. But you’ll not want to hear my moralising, Mr. Lockwood; you’ll judge, as well as I can, all these things:

   • 1908, Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives’ Tale, Chapter 8,^[6]

     The usual conduct of the spoilt child! Had she not witnessed it, and moralized upon it, in other families?

   • 1991, Saul Bellow, “Something to Remember Me By” in Something to Remember Me By: Three Tales, New York: Viking, p. 206,^[7]

     I depended on Philip now, for I had nothing, not even seven cents for carfare. I could be certain, however, that he wouldn’t moralize at me, he’d set about dressing me, he’d scrounge a sweater among his neighborhood acquaintances […]

2. (transitive) To say (something) expressing a moral reflection or judgment.
   • 1929, Virginia Woolf, “Geraldine and Jane” in The Common Reader, Second Series, London: The Hogarth Press, 1935, p. 191,^[8]

     “The more one loves, the more helpless one feels”, she moralised.

3. (transitive) To render moral; to correct the morals of; to give the appearance of morality to.
   • 1647, Robert Baron, Erotopaignion, or, The Cyprian Academy, London, p. 61,^[9]

     Let gratefull Aromatick odours burne,

     Let pious incense smoake, for the returne

     Of Great Flaminius, in whom abide

     More Art, then raised Athens to her pride,

     More civill Ethicks he containe, then may

     Well moralize all sauage India.

   • 1809, David Ramsay, The History of South-Carolina: from Its First Settlement in 1670, to the Year 1808, Charleston: for the author, Volume 2, Chapter 11, p. 449,^[10]

     In estimating the value of cotton, its capacity to excite industry among the lower classes of people […] is of high importance. It has had a large share in moralizing the poor white people of the country.

   • 1940, George Orwell, “Charles Dickens” in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968, Volume 1, p. 426,^[11]

     He sees the idiocy of an educational system founded on the Greek lexicon and the wax-ended cane; on the other hand, he has no use for the new kind of school that is coming up in the ’fifties and ’sixties, the “modern” school, with its gritty insistence on “facts”. What, then, does he want? As always, what he appears to want is a moralised version of the existing thing—the old type of school, but with no caning, no bullying or underfeeding, and not quite so much Greek.

   • 1952, Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun, New York: Harper & Row, Chapter 11, p. 301,^[12]

     Far more dangerous than crimes of passion are the crimes of idealism—the crimes which are instigated, fostered and moralized by hallowed words.

4. (transitive) To give a moral quality to; to affect the moral quality of, either for better or worse.
   • 1716, Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, Part 3, in Religio Medici; its sequel Christian Morals, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844, p. 211,^[13]

     For since good and bad stars moralize not our actions, and neither excuse nor commend, acquit or condemn our good or bad deeds at the present or last bar […] not celestial figures, but virtuous schemes must denominate and state our actions.

   • 1927, J. B. S. Haldane “The Time Factor in Medicine” in Possible Worlds and Other Essays, London: Chatto and Windus, 1930,^[14]

     The attempts which are made in such [school] courses [on ‘hygiene’] to make as many physiological phenomena as possible point a moral, and to suppress the rest, are reminiscent of the analogous attempts to moralize zoology which were made by the authors of mediaeval bestiaries.

   • 1948, Gilbert Murray, Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus: Translated into English rhyming verse with Introduction and Notes, London: George Allen & Unwin, Preface, p. 9,^[15]

     He makes no attempt to moralize his gods or to pass any moral judgement upon them.

   • 1978, Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Chapter 6, p. 43,^[16]

     With the advent of Christianity, which imposed more moralized notions of disease […] , a closer fit between disease and “victim” gradually evolved.

5. (transitive, obsolete) To apply to a moral purpose; to explain in a moral sense; to draw a moral from.
   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1,^[17]

     Did he not moralize this spectacle?

   • 1654, Henry King, The Psalmes of David from the New Translation of the Bible Turned into Meter, London: Humphrey Moseley, Preface,^[18]

     […] where the Place is obscure, and the Construction difficult, I take leave by paraphrase to give the Meaning: which is a method of times observed by the Septuagint, whose Version Moralizeth in the Greek, what was wrapp’d up in figures by the Hebrew.

   • 1692, Roger L’Estrange, Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions, London: R. Sare et al., Fable 76, A Dog in a Manger, Reflexion, p. 75,^[19]

     This Fable is so well known that it is Moralliz’d in a Common Proverb.

   • 1766, Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, London: F. Newbery, Chapter 13, p. 126,^[20]

     I was going to moralize this fable, when our attention was called off to a warm dis|pute between my wife and Mr. Burchell […]

   • 1781, Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry, London: J. Dodsley et al., Volume 3, Section 43, pp. 498-499,^[21]

     In the Fairy Queen, allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur’s round table are moralised.

6. (transitive, obsolete) To supply with moral lessons, teachings, or examples; to lend a moral to.
   • 1793, William Wordsworth, “Pleasures of the Pedestrian” in Poems by William Wordsworth: including Lyrical Ballads, and the Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815, Volume 1, p. 70,^[22]

     Kind Nature’s charities his steps attend,

     In every babbling brook he finds a friend,

     While chast’ning thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed

     By Wisdom, moralize his pensive road.

Derived terms

• moralization
• moralizer

Translations

References

Anagrams

• molarize

English

Etymology

From French moralisme

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?m???l?zm/

Noun

moralism (usually uncountable, plural moralisms)

1. (uncountable, often derogatory) The act or practice of moralizing (making moral reflections or judging the morality of others).
   • 1937, Helen Foster Snow (as Nym Wales), “The Modern Chinese Literary Movement” in Edgar Snow (ed.), Living China: Modern Chinese Short Stories, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 337,^[1]

     The Romantic movement […] struggled for ‘art for art’s sake’ against the old moralism and didacticism […]

   • 1982, Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air, Penguin, 1988, Part 1, pp. 53-54,

     It is a bitter fact of life that, despite the air of pious moralism that chokes this cramped town, a rich man’s mistress still counts for more than a hungry saint.

   • 2011, Donald Weinstein, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet, New Haven: Yale University Press, Chapter 1, p. 8,^[2]

     Reared by conventionally pious parents, Girolamo also imbibed more than a little of his grandfather’s dour moralism along with his Latin lessons, Bible studies, and Saint Thomas.

2. (countable, often derogatory) A maxim or saying believed by the speaker to embody a moral truth; an instance of moralizing.
   • 1859, Frederic Farrar, Julian Home, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1860, Chapter 20, p. 244,^[3]

     There was a delicious spice of worldliness in the topics of conversation which was quite refreshing to him, accustomed as he was to the somewhat droning moralisms of his “congenial friends.”

   • 1923, D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, New York: Viking, 1964, Chapter 2, p. 21,

     Now is your chance, Europe. […] paddle your own canoe on a new sea, while clever America lies on her muck-heaps of gold, strangled in her own barbed wire of shalt-not ideals and shalt-not moralisms.

3. (uncountable, dated) Religious practice that focuses on morality while placing little emphasis on doctrine or the metaphysical; adherence to a system of morality with little or no reference to religion.
   • 1904, Robert Herrick, The Common Lot, New York: Macmillan, Chapter 17, p. 230,^[4]

     That thin, colorless protestantism of her fathers had faded into a nameless moralism. She had no Christ before whom she could pour her adoration and love. Instead, she had taken to herself a man; and now the clay of his being was crumbling in her hands....

   • 1948, Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (translator), Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann, New York: Knopf, Chapter 11,^[5]

     The scientific superiority of liberal theology, it is now said, is indeed incontestable, but its theological position is weak, for its moralism and humanism lack insight into the dæmonic character of human existence.

Related terms

• amoralism
• immoralism
• moralise, moralize
• moralist
• moralistic

Translations

Romanian

Etymology

From French moralisme

Noun

moralism n (uncountable)

1. moralism

Declension