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  1. ethos love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. The disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, culture, or movement: "They cultivated a subversive alternative ethos” ( Anthony Burgess).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Habitual character and disposition.
  2. n. Specifically In the Gr. fine arts, etc., the inherent quality of a work which produces, or is fitted to produce, a high moral impression, noble, dignified, and universal, as opposed to a work characterized by pathos, or the particular, accidental, passionate, realistic quality.

Wiktionary

  1. n. The character or fundamental values of a person, people, culture, or movement.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The character, sentiment, or disposition of a community or people, considered as a natural endowment; the spirit which actuates manners and customs; also, the characteristic tone or genius of an institution or social organization.
  2. n. (Æsthetics) The traits in a work of art which express the ideal or typic character -- character as influenced by the ethos (sense 1) of a people -- rather than realistic or emotional situations or individual character in a narrow sense; -- opposed to pathos.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. (anthropology) the distinctive spirit of a culture or an era

Etymologies

  1. From Ancient Greek ἦθος (ēthos, "custom, habit"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Greek ēthos, character; see s(w)e- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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antonyms (1)

Words with the opposite meaning

  1. pathos

hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. attribute

same context (6)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. haemin
  1. radioactivity
  1. didaskalon
  1. meritocracy
  1. governance
  1. ideology

reverse dictionary (4)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. Greek
  1. ethos
  1. ethology
  1. pathos

tags (2)

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  1. greek
  1. SATWOTD

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  • jwjarvis the internal executive ethos Dec 4, 2010

  • qroqqa I am always confused over whether I should be pronouncing this /ˈeθɒs/ (as in ethics) or /ˈiːθɒs/ (as in ether). Whenever I look it up I am confused by the fact that there are two related Greek words εθος ethos and ηθος êthos, and that though ethics comes from the latter it is invariably pronounced with short E.

    So εθος ethos meant "custom, habit" but did not really give any English derivatives. The related word ηθος êthos is more complex, giving all of English ethos, ethics, ethology. In the singular its meanings extend to "character, nature", basically what ethos is and what ethics and in part ethology study; in the plural (ηθη êthê) it means "haunts, abodes" of animals and "manners, customs" of people.

    Unrelated are short-E ethno- "people" and long-E (in fact AE, Greek αι-) ether, aether "airlike substance/realm". Jun 4, 2009

  • andrew.simone 'I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.' Dec 8, 2006

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‘ethos’ has been looked up 6139 times, loved by 11 people, added to 91 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 8.