right and wrong

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the most fundamental moral distinction, marking the difference between actions, choices, and dispositions that are ethically permissible or good and those that are ethically impermissible or bad; the capacity to distinguish right from wrong is held by many moral traditions to be the defining characteristic of mature moral agency, and its development in children — moral education — is one of the central concerns of parents, teachers, and communities; in everyday discourse, right and wrong serves as a shorthand for the entire domain of ethics, and appeals to it carry enormous rhetorical force precisely because they invoke a standard understood to be binding regardless of personal preference, cultural convention, or institutional authority