Note 358 – Comparing morale and moral

A work colleague kindly left a comment to tell me that I had used the word morale instead of moral in Note 353 – Is it ‘formally’ or ‘formerly’? (I could have kicked myself, but thank you!).   The sentence I originally wrote was: “The morale of the blog is:..” which of course should have been “The moral of the blog is…”.  Instead of giving myself lines, I’ve dedicated this post to explaining the difference.  Here are some definitions along with the use of the words in sentences:

MORAL

Moral comes from the Latin word moralis.   It can be a noun or an adjective and the dictionaries I have looked at show a variety of meanings as follows: 

Moral (as a noun)

1. “A lesson that can be derived from a story or experience” (source:Oxford Dictionaries.com), e.g. the moral of the story is that you should never tell lies.
2. “Standards of behaviour; principles of right and wrong (morals)” (source:Oxford Dictionaries.com), e.g. The lads that misbehave down the road have no morals.

Moral (as an adjective)

1. “Concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour” (source:Oxford Dictionaries.com), e.g. The shop had a moral obligation to give the money back.
2. “Holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct” (source:Oxford Dictionaries.com), e.g. Jim is a very moral man.

MORALE

According to Oxford Dictionaries.com, morale is a mid 18th century word coming from the French word moral.  It was re-spelt to “preserve the final stress in pronunciation” (so that it sounds different to moral). The dictionary defines it as “the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time”.

E.g. The morale of the group was very low after the company announced the redundancies.

My thoughts: I won’t be spelling that one wrong again!

That’s all for today.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra
www.sandramadeira.com
8 more days of My Writing Challenge to go…