MEANING
Judging others’ conduct through rigid or overly prescriptive standards of right and wrong.
Use it for
criticizing judgment that substitutes condemnation for explanation; distinguishing ethical analysis from rigid moralizing; analyzing a narrator’s treatment of other people’s choicesDistinguishes rigid moral judging from serious ethical reasoning. Academic functions: Analysis / Interpretation.
Words that belong together
- a moralistic tone
- moralistic criticism
- a moralistic account
On the page
The essay replaces a moralistic account of poverty with an analysis of institutional constraints.
The narrator’s moralistic tone discourages attention to the character’s conflicting obligations.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- moralistic
Usage notes
Attributive or predicative. More moralistic and most moralistic are natural. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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