Piety
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Reverence and devotion to God. uncountable
"Colleen's piety led her to make sacrifices that most people would not have made."
- 2 righteousness by virtue of being pious wordnet
- 3 Similar reverence to one's parents and family or to one's country. uncountable
"patriotism as piety, when done right"
- 4 A devout or otherwise laudable act, thought, or statement. countable
"Those who dwell outside of Western Establishment bastions are not idiots just because they do not mouth the pieties of GASP. Some of them can write very well. There are other traditions, you know. They could write for Wikipedia, if you let them. But such true openness and genuine tolerance is unacceptable, precisely because those other traditions fail to pay exclusive homage to GASP sources, through which—Wikipedians imagine—all the benefits of global civilization flow."
- 5 A devout or otherwise laudable act, thought, or statement.; A platitude that may be empty or at least facile and undercommitted. countable, uncountable
"He was quick with the pieties about hard work, honest communication, active listening, and respecting others' viewpoints, but walking the walk is different from talking the talk."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"There is no piety in the world which is not the result of cultivation, and which cannot be increased by the degree of care and attention bestowed upon it."
Etymology
From Middle English piete, borrowed from Middle French pieté, from Latin pietās. See also the doublets pietà and pity. By surface analysis, pious + -ety.
Related phrases
More for "piety"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.