8 Comments
I think " this man has no morals" is a more frequently used expression than " this man is not moral"
I'm glad you weighed in on this I was not comfortable with what we had. Many thanks.
I see you have added “ethics” as an alternative I think it is a faux ami. Ethics in English has quite a different meaning: The polite or correct way of doing things.
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I think I would probably argue that what you are describing could more accurately be termed "etiquette", whereas "ethics" refers to the study of moral principles. I agree, however, that "morals" and "ethics" are not interchangeable!
Saying Ο άντρας αυτός δεν έχει ηθική." Is quite more severe than saying he has poor "etiquette" and it would be doing a disservice to our learners if we accepted it as such. In this case, the Greek word is not a false friend.
Here is a compilation of Greek/English dictionaries to see the word ηθική translated as "ethics" or "morals".
https://www.lexilogos.com/english/greek_dictionary.htm
Here's a dictionary showing differences between similar or confusing words. https://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals. Check it out.
I use it a lot, but I also use many other dictionaries...Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam Webster etc.
Now let's see ethics https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ethics. Moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity
And here for etiquette and you'll see why we cannot translate the Greek as "etiquette". https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/etiquette
While some dictionaries include "etiquette" as a translation for ηθική I cannot imagie a context where that would be correct.
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Oh, no, I completely agree with you; I was saying that the description suggested by jeanprendiville ("the polite or correct way of doing things") more correctly defines the word "etiquette" than it does "ethics". I was not arguing that etiquette should be accepted as a translation.
Agreed, "ethics" in English refers to questions of moral right and wrong - not just politeness.
