This week’s theme
Idioms & metaphors

This week’s words
lace-curtain
stile
millstone
lightning rod
moral compass

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(MOR-uhl kuhm-puhs)

MEANING:

noun: One’s inner sense of right and wrong.

ETYMOLOGY:

From moral, from Latin mos (custom) + compass (an instrument for determining directions), from Old French compasser (to measure), from Latin com- (with) + passus (pace). Earliest documented use: 1817.

NOTES:

Everyone but psychopaths has a moral compass. It’s just that some people keep theirs in airplane mode. Ideally, it helps us navigate through ethical fog, pointing true north even when convenience or temptation tries to pull the needle. It’s the instrument that lets you find your way between “just this once” and “I really shouldn’t.”

USAGE:

“What [Jared] Kushner’s book really is, however, is a portrait of a man whose moral compass has been demagnetized.”
Elizabeth Spiers; Jared Kushner’s Memoir Is Only Inadvertently Revealing; The Washington Post; Aug 29, 2022.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: