vice
pronunciation
How to pronounce vice in British English:
UK [vaɪs]
How to pronounce vice in American English:
US [vaɪs]
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- Noun:
- moral weakness
- a specific form of evildoing
Word Origin
- vice
- vice: Including the prefix vice-, English has three distinct words vice. The oldest, ‘wickedness’ [13], comes via Old French vice from Latin vitium ‘defect, offence’, which also gave English vicious [14], vitiate [16], and vituperate [16]. Vice ‘tool for holding’ [14] was acquired via Old French viz from Latin vītis.This came to denote ‘vine’ (in which sense it gave English viticulture ‘vine-growing’ [19]), but originally it signified ‘tendril’, and it was this that lay behind the original meanings of English vice: ‘winding staircase’ and ‘screw’. Its modern application began to emerge in the 15th century, and derived from the notion of jaws being opened and closed by means of a ‘screw’.The prefix vice- [15] comes from Latin vice ‘in place of’, the ablative case of vicis ‘change’ (source of English vicar, vicissitude, etc).=> vicious, vitiate, vituperate; viticulture
- vice (n.1)
- "moral fault, wickedness," c. 1300, from Old French vice "fault, failing, defect, irregularity, misdemeanor" (12c.), from Latin vitium "defect, offense, blemish, imperfection," in both physical and moral senses (in Medieval Latin also vicium; source also of Italian vezzo "usage, entertainment"), from PIE *wi-tio-, from root *wei- (3) "vice, fault, guilt." Horace and Aristotle have already spoken to us about the virtues of their forefathers and the vices of their own times, and through the centuries, authors have talked the same way. If all this were true, we would be bears today. [Montesquieu] Vice squad "special police unit targeting prostitution, narcotics, gambling, etc.," is attested from 1905, American English. Vice anglais "fetish for corporal punishment," literally "the English vice," is attested from 1942, from French. In Old French, the seven deadly sins were les set vices.
- vice (n.2)
- "tool for holding," see vise.
Example
- 1. He is unrepentant about what most everyone labels a vice .
- 2. The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man , but is nevertheless an intellectual vice .
- 3. It is no longer a luxury or a vice but a metabolic necessity , like water on the plains .
- 4. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic .
- 5. It means only that national or communal conflicts are seldom a matter of clear-cut virtue against vice , and that all communities produce men capable of wickedness and crime .