Moral - morale

These two words have clearly separate meanings now, although they were not always distinguished, and they have a common origin. They are pronounced, as well as spelled, differently.

• The more common is the adjective, moral, pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, 'MOR-âl', IPA: /ˈmɒr əl/. In its simplest everyday use, this means, roughly, 'good', or 'fitting a code of conduct'. (Philosophers debate a more precise meaning endlessly, and politicians and ministers of religion can lay down very precise meanings - it is an essentially contested concept.) It can be heard in such sentences as "She's a very moral person. She would never send private mail through the office post." Such a code of conduct is sometimes called "morals". "Hitting children is against my morals." The noun morals, with a plural form but a singular meaning, is also the name of a branch of philosophy, that which, broadly speaking, deals with matters of right and wrong.

There are two distinctly different negatives of the adjective moral - go to Amoral - immoral. There is also an abstract noun for the system grouping the various moral beliefs of an individual or a group, morality. Don't make the typographical error of writing it as mortality - 'the condition of being subject to death', 'the certainty that a being will die' - or a technical term used in Social Sciences and statistics ~ 'death rate'.

• The less common of the two words is the noun, morale, is written with a final '-e-', and pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, 'merAHL', IPA: /mə (or ɒ) r ˈɑːl/. Morale means 'the group sense of confidence' or 'the team spirit' in an organization. It was originally used in this way in military circles, where it was useful to label the factor in an army that makes it more likely to carry on fighting.