virtue
part of speech
noun (virtue, uncountable; a virtue, virtues)
meaning for a pupil
1) Virtue is goodness and right behaviour. tree →
2) A virtue is a good quality in a person, such as honesty, kindness, patience or courage. tree →
3) A virtue of something is a good point or advantage: «The virtue of this bike is that it's light». tree →
4) «By virtue of» (formal) means because of. tree →
sense in the lessons
In ethics and religious education pupils learn virtues such as honesty, fairness and courage; Christians speak of faith, hope and love (charity) as virtues. Proverbs: «Patience is a virtue». Phrases: «patience is a virtue», «make a virtue of necessity», «by virtue of».
examples
- Honesty is an important virtue. tree →
- Patience is a virtue, my gran always says. tree →
- The story shows the virtue of courage. tree →
- Christians speak of faith, hope and love as the three great virtues. tree →
- One virtue of this tent is that it's easy to put up. tree →
- She won the prize by virtue of her hard work. tree →
- Kindness is a virtue everyone can practise. tree →
- "Modestia is a beautiful virtue," said the man. tree →
note
Uncountable (goodness) and countable (a good quality). Adjective: virtuous. Opposite: vice. Do not confuse «virtue» with «virtual» (seeming real but not really, like virtual reality).
In the corpora
- Character thinking asks what a good, kind, brave and honest person would do; philosophers call it virtue ethics.
- Virtues are good habits such as honesty and courage; vices are bad habits such as greed and cruelty.
- Loyalty means standing by your friends, family and groups, but loyalty to wrongdoing is not a virtue.
- Benjamin Franklin kept a chart of thirteen virtues and marked his faults every day.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «virtue» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.