- Vice
- Vice Vice, n. [F., from L. vitium.]
1. A defect; a fault; an error; a blemish; an imperfection;
as, the vices of a political constitution; the vices of a
horse.
[1913 Webster]
Withouten vice of syllable or letter. --Chaucer. [1913 Webster]
Mark the vice of the procedure. --Sir W. Hamilton. [1913 Webster]
2. A moral fault or failing; especially, immoral conduct or habit, as in the indulgence of degrading appetites; customary deviation in a single respect, or in general, from a right standard, implying a defect of natural character, or the result of training and habits; a harmful custom; immorality; depravity; wickedness; as, a life of vice; the vice of intemperance. [1913 Webster]
I do confess the vices of my blood. --Shak. [1913 Webster]
Ungoverned appetite . . . a brutish vice. --Milton. [1913 Webster]
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station. --Addison. [1913 Webster]
3. The buffoon of the old English moralities, or moral dramas, having the name sometimes of one vice, sometimes of another, or of Vice itself; -- called also {Iniquity}. [1913 Webster]
Note: This character was grotesquely dressed in a cap with ass's ears, and was armed with a dagger of lath: one of his chief employments was to make sport with the Devil, leaping on his back, and belaboring him with the dagger of lath till he made him roar. The Devil, however, always carried him off in the end. --Nares. [1913 Webster]
How like you the Vice in the play? . . . I would not give a rush for a Vice that has not a wooden dagger to snap at everybody. --B. Jonson. [1913 Webster]
Syn: Crime; sin; iniquity; fault. See {Crime}. [1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English. 2000.
