Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A virtue modified by considerations of prudence or conventionality.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The world resents a half-virtue, and the world is right It is the half-virtue which breeds hypocrisy and self-deception, and these are the most despicable of human vices.

    Despair's Last Journey David Christie Murray

  • Mary had the solitary and heroic half-virtue of the Tudors: she was a patriot.

    A Short History of England 1905

  • We feel indeed divided within ourselves, and we need to be unified; but the inward unification is possible only for the absolutely debauched or the absolutely good man; there is no _via media_; half-virtue rends us ....

    Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 Charles Dudley Warner 1864

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