honor

(ŏn'ər)
n.

1. High respect, as that shown for special merit; esteem: the honor shown to a Nobel laureate.
2. 1. Good name; reputation.
   2. A source or cause of credit: was an honor to the profession.
3. 1. Glory or recognition; distinction.
   2. A mark, token, or gesture of respect or distinction: the place of honor at the table.
   3. A military decoration.
   4. A title conferred for achievement.
4. High rank.
5. The dignity accorded to position: awed by the honor of his office.
6. Great privilege: I have the honor to present the governor.
7. Honor Used with His, Her, or Your as a title and form of address for certain officials, such as judges and mayors: Her Honor the Mayor.
8. 1. Principled uprightness of character; personal integrity.
   2. A code of integrity, dignity, and pride, chiefly among men, that was maintained in some societies, as in feudal Europe, by force of arms.
   3. A woman's chastity or reputation for chastity.
9. honors Social courtesies offered to guests: did the honors at tea.
10. honors
    1. Special recognition for unusual academic achievement: graduated from college with honors.
    2. A program of advanced study for exceptional students: planned to take honors in history.
11. Sports. The right of being first at the tee in golf.
12. Games.
    1. Any of the four or five highest cards, especially the ace, king, queen, jack, and ten of the trump suit, in card games such as bridge or whist.
    2. The points allotted to these cards. Often used in the plural.

tr.v., -ored, -or·ing, -ors.

1. 1. To hold in respect; esteem.
   2. To show respect for.
   3. To bow to (another dancer) in square dancing: Honor your partner.
2. To confer distinction on: He has honored us with his presence.
3. To accept or pay as valid: honor a check; a store that honors all credit cards.

idiom:

honor bound

1. Under an obligation enforced by the personal integrity of the one obliged: I was honor bound to admit that she had done the work.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin.]

honorer hon'or·er n.

SYNONYMS   honor, homage, reverence, veneration, deference. These nouns denote admiration, respect, or esteem accorded to another as a right or as due. Honor is the most general term: The hero tried to be worthy of the honor in which he was held. Homage is often in the form of a ceremonial tribute that conveys allegiance: "There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth" (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Reverence is a feeling of deep respect and devotion: "Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man" (Ayn Rand). Veneration is both the feeling and the reverential expression of respect, love, and awe: Her veneration for her mentor never wavered. Deference is courteous, respectful regard for another that often implies yielding to him or her: The funeral was arranged with deference to the family of the deceased.

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1. to accept and pay an obligation when due.


2. significant reward or accolade for an accomplishment, enhancing the individual’s reputation. An example is the presentation of an award to the salesperson with the highest sales for the year.

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noun

1. Great respect or high public esteem accorded as a right or as due: deference, homage, obeisance. See respect/contempt/standing.
2. A feeling of deference, approval, and liking: account, admiration, appreciation, consideration, esteem, estimation, favor, regard, respect. See respect/contempt/standing.
3. A person's high standing among others: dignity, good name, good report, prestige, reputation, repute, respect, status. See respect/contempt/standing.
4. Recognition of achievement or superiority or a sign of this: accolade, distinction, kudos, laurel (often used in plural). See respect/contempt/standing.
5. The quality of being honest: honesty, honorableness, incorruptibility, integrity, upstandingness. See honest/dishonest.

verb

1. To have a high opinion of: admire, consider, esteem, regard, respect, value. Idioms: look up to, thinkhighlymuchwellof. See praise/blame.
2. To pay tribute or homage to: acclaim, celebrate, eulogize, exalt, extol, glorify, hail², laud, magnify, panegyrize, praise. Idioms: sing someone's praises. See praise/blame.
3. To cause to be eminent or recognized: distinguish, elevate, ennoble, exalt, signalize. See respect/contempt/standing.
4. To lend dignity or honor to by an act or favor: dignify, grace. See beautiful/ugly.

Idioms beginning with honor:
honor bound

In addition to the idiom beginning with honor, also see do the honors; in honor of; on one's honor; word of honor.

n

Definition: integrity
Antonyms: blemish, disgrace, dishonor, ill repute, stigma

n

Definition: praise, award
Antonyms: censure, condemnation, contempt, reproach

n

Definition: respect
Antonyms: contempt, debasement, degradation, denunciation, derision, disgrace, dishonor, disrespect, humiliation

v

Definition: recognize, treat with respect
Antonyms: betray, denounce, disgrace, dishonor, disrespect, reproach, shame

Honor was an ethical system whose prescriptions varied according to one's place in the social hierarchy. Rank, gender, age, and a host of other personal qualities determined what types of behavior were honorable, and what degree of respect and deference one could expect from others. Tension existed, however, between how honor was defined in the abstract and how people used honor. Jurists and moralists in early modern Europe conceived of honor as part of a rigid structure of values and conduct, an almost tangible possession that one could gain or lose. In practice honor was more fluid and served as a rhetoric flexible enough for individuals to adapt to their own purposes. For example, the laws of the state and the morals of the church labeled prostitutes in sixteenth-century Rome as dishonorable, but court records show that prostitutes used the language of honor to make claims for respect from their clients, patrons, and neighbors.

The Roles of Honor

Despite its equivocal meanings, honor was a crucial aspect of culture and conduct at every level of society. Notions of honor varied by region, gender, status, and time, but these differences were all variations on a theme that maintained remarkable similarity as it stretched across Europe, reached back into the Middle Ages, and persisted in some form into the nineteenth century. Everywhere honor depended on one's reputation for proper behavior, as judged by one's peers and neighbors, so personal honor was always vulnerable to gossip and slander that could redefine one's estimation in the eyes of others. While honor was meant to be a moral code, in reality its concerns had as much to do with preventing, masking, or redressing humiliation than with encouraging virtue.

Individual communities used honor to define membership and to enforce the responsibilities of members. For example, if a young woman defied custom and married an old man, disappointed young men might defend the honor of their village by staging raucous and even violent protests, called charivaris in France and "rough music" in England. Artisan guilds acted against guild members who threatened their corporate honor through dishonest business practices. In Venice, groups of young men engaged in bouts of ritual combat over the city's bridges to assert the honor of one neighborhood against another. Honor also demarcated castes in society, as in Germany where executioners were considered dishonorable and were not allowed to intermarry with other, honorable groups.

One aspect of honor that remained constant throughout early modern Europe was its strong connection to patriarchy, sex, and gender. Honor codes universally prescribed appropriate sexual behavior for both women and men. Women needed to be chaste in order to be honorable, and "whore" was usually the most damning affront one could level against a woman. Men were held responsible for the sexual conduct of women under their protection, including their wives, daughters, and sisters. This left male honor dangerously vulnerable to the actions of women. If a man failed to control "his" women, he invited neighbors to brand him a cuckold. Because male honor and female chastity were so thoroughly intertwined, men might take violent revenge against anyone who threatened, in word or deed, the sexual honor of "their" women—if they did not direct their violence against the women themselves. While honor's sexual component is associated most closely with the underdeveloped Mediterranean basin, historians have found similar patterns in vanguards of modernity like Holland and in regions as far removed from the Mediterranean as Muscovy. Even for women, however, sexuality was never the sole determinant of personal honor. In England, for example, a woman's honor rested partly on her skills as a housewife and mother.

Honor also embraced social hierarchy. Nobles enjoyed a more honorable standing than commoners, and they reinforced their claims to honor through the ceremony of the duel. Dueling arose first in Italy as part of the Renaissance's developments in courtesy and manners, and then spread throughout Europe. Dueling became the accepted means of redressing an affront, thereby distancing noblemen from brawling commoners. Dueling manuals did not recognize the right of plebeian men to duel, but nevertheless popular duels did exist. Sailors in Amsterdam and peasants in Castile invested their knife fights with rituals similar to elite dueling practices, and their contests even arose from similar causes, such as precedence, lying, and women, even if non-nobles sometimes preferred terms like "honesty" and "reputation" instead of "honor" when describing their claims to respect and good treatment. Throughout the early modern period, as elite customs and manners continued to draw away from the behavior of the nonelite, the honor of the nobility became increasingly distant from that of their inferiors. Vendettas, brawls, and charivaris gave way to politeness and civility as components of honor for gentlemen, especially in the eighteenth century. Even aristocratic duels became less violent. As the elite became less tolerant of violence, the duelist's aim became the demonstration of his courage rather than the destruction of his opponent.

Throughout the early modern period, honor had its critics. No matter how courteous the etiquette of dueling became, in the eyes of the civil and religious authorities assault and murder remained crimes and sins. Moralists declared that true honor resided in Christian virtue and in the conscience, not in the estimation of one's peers. Just as often, however, honor fit hand in glove with other values and historical trends. By attacking debauched clerics who preyed on good Christian women, and by expelling prostitutes from Christian communities, Protestant reformers appealed to honor to win popularity in sixteenth-century German cities. Honor helped foster the scientific revolution by allowing gentlemen to trust the word of peers who conducted experiments hundreds of miles away. Honor helped shape diplomacy and warfare, for example preventing seventeenth-century Spanish statesmen from reining in Madrid's imperial overreach because they could not bear to abandon obligations they had made to defend Catholicism and preserve the Habsburg inheritance. Honor even played a role in the revolution that brought the early modern period to a close, as illicit pornographic writings circulated in Old Regime France that undermined respect for Louis XVI, depicting him as an impotent cuckold. Honor did not pass away during the French Revolution, however. Well into the nineteenth century statesmen, capitalists, and journalists adapted honor to suit their new social circumstances.

Bibliography

Cohen, Elizabeth S. "Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22 (1992): 597–625.

Farr, James R. Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550–1650. Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1988.

Kollmann, Nancy Shields. By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia. Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1999.

Muir, Edward. Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta & Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance. Baltimore and London, 1993.

Shoemaker, Robert B. "The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660–1800." The Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (2002): 525–545.

—SCOTT TAYLOR

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

As a verb, to accept a bill of exchange, or to pay a note, check, or accepted bill, at maturity. To pay or to accept and pay, or, where a credit so engages, to purchase or discount a draft complying with the terms of the draft.

As a noun, in old English law, a seigniory of several manors held under one baron or lord paramount. Also those dignities or privileges, degrees of nobility, knighthood, and other titles that flow from the crown.

In the United States, the customary title of courtesy given to judges, and occasionally to some other officers, as, "his honor," "your honor," "honorable."

IN BRIEF: Show respect towards. Also: To be respected for a deed.

It was an honor to be chosen to lead the band in the parade.

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

sign description: Both H hands move downward infront of the forehead and chin.

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Quotes:

"There is no question what the roll of honor in America is. The roll of honor consists of the names of men who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty." - Woodrow T. Wilson

"The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself." - Woodrow T. Wilson

"A fisherman may measure his catch by the size, but when is a man big enough to keep?" - Source Unknown

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them." - Mark Twain

"It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too." - Alexis De Tocqueville

"Better not be at all than not be noble." - Lord Alfred Tennyson

See more famous quotes about Honor

For a list of words related to honored, see:

• Special, Bright, Skillful, or Unusual

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See words rhyming with "honor."

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - ære, hæder, honnør, ærbødighed
v. tr. - ære, hædre, udmærke, opfylde, honorere, acceptere, indfri

idioms:

• do the honours    introducere gæster, sørge for gæsterne, optræde som vært
• His Honour    Deres velærværdighed
• honour bound    æresforpligtet, moralsk forpligtet
• honourable mention    hædrende/rosende omtale
• honours degree    eksamenskarakter ved universitet
• honours list    liste over monarkens æresbevisninger
• in honour bound    æresforpligtet, moralsk forpligtet
• in honour of    til ære for
• Your Honour    Deres velærværdighed

Nederlands (Dutch)
eer, respect, onderscheiding, eerbewijs, voorrecht, honneurs bij bridgen en golf, (mv) bijzonder studieprogramma voor uitblinkers, eren, huldigen, in hoog aanzien houden, respecteren, zich houden aan, in de adelstand verheffen, honoreren, decoreren, bezoldigen, een cheque uitbetalen

Français (French)
n. - honneur, privilège, homme d'honneur, distinction, hommage, Honneur (titres)
v. tr. - honorer, faire l'honneur à qn de (faire) (littér), honorer (un chèque, un contrat), tenir (une promesse, un engagement), remplir (un accord)

idioms:

• do the honours    faire les honneurs, faire les présentations
• His Honour    Son Honneur
• honour bound    tenu par l'honneur (de faire)
• honourable mention    mention honorable
• honours degree    (GB) licence ordinaire, (US) licence réservée aux meilleurs étudiants
• honours list    (GB) liste des distinctions honorifiques conférées par le monarque à l'occasion du 1er janvier
• in honour bound    être tenu par les honneurs
• in honour of    en l'honneur de
• Your Honour    Votre Honneur

Deutsch (German)
n. - Ehre
v. - ehren, respektieren, honorieren

idioms:

• do the honours    die Gastgeberpflichten gegenüber seinen Gästen erfüllen
• His Honour    Euer Ehren, Hohes Gericht
• honour bound    moralisch verpflichtet
• honourable mention    lobende Erwähnung
• honours degree    Examen mit Auszeichnung
• honours list    Liste der Titel- und Rangverleihungen, Liste der mit Auszeichnung bestanden Habenden
• in honour bound    moralisch verpflichtet
• in honour of    jmdm. zu Ehren
• Your Honour    Euer Gnaden

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - τιμή, υπόληψη, (πληθ.) τιμητικές διακρίσεις, τιμές, αριστείο, άριστα, πτυχίο ειδικότητας, ειδίκευση, τίτλος, τιμητική διάκριση
v. - τιμώ, εκτιμώ, υπολήπτομαι, (οικον.) εξοφλώ (εγκαίρως), πληρώνω

idioms:

• do the honours    εκτελώ χρέη οικοδεσπότη
• His Honour    ο Εντιμότατος
• honour bound    δεσμευμένος με ηθική υποχρέωση
• honourable mention    εύφημη μνεία
• honours degree    (πανεπιστημιακό) πτυχίο ειδίκευσης
• honours list    (Βρετ.) κατάλογος υποψήφιων στους οποίους απονέμεται τιμητική διάκριση
• in honour bound    δεσμευμένος με ηθική υποχρέωση
• in honour of    προς τιμήν του/των
• Your Honour    Εντιμότατε

Italiano (Italian)
onorare, onore, onorificenza, omaggio

idioms:

• (in) honour bound    tenuto in considerazione
• do the honours    fare gli onori
• His Honour    Vostro Onore
• honourable mention    menzione ad onore
• honours degree    laurea con lode
• honours list    lista delle onorificenze
• in honour of    in onore di

Português (Portuguese)
n. - honra (f), título (m) honorífico, virtude (f)
v. - honrar, aceitar (pagar)

idioms:

• (in) honour bound    obrigado por honra
• do the honours    honrar
• His/Your Honour    Sua Reverência/Vossa Senhoria
• honourable mention    menção (f) honrosa
• honours degree    grau (m) em distinção especial
• honours list    lista (f) de honra escolar (EUA)
• in honour of    em honra a

Русский (Russian)
честь, доброе имя, почет, почести, почитать, удостаивать, соблюдать (условия)

idioms:

• (in) honour bound    морально обязанный
• do the honours    оказывать почести
• His/Your Honour    Ваша/Его честь
• honourable mention    благодарность в приказе
• honours degree    почетная степень
• honours list    почетный список
• in honour of    в честь

Español (Spanish)
n. - honor, honra, condecoración, medalla
v. tr. - honrar, hacer honor a, respetar, reverenciar

idioms:

• do the honours    hacer los honores
• His Honour    Su Señoría, Señor Juez
• honour bound    tener una obligación moral, estar moralmente obligado
• honourable mention    mención honorífica
• honours degree    licenciatura superior
• honours list    lista de títulos honoríficos otorgados por el monarca el día de su cumpleaños
• in honour bound    por el honor de uno, estar moralmente obligado
• in honour of    en honor de
• Your Honour    Su Señoría, Señor Juez

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ära, heder, högaktning, värdighet, (pl.) honnörer (kortsp.)
v. - hedra, utmärka, lösa in (växel), anta

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
荣誉, 信用, 头衔, 尊敬, 给以荣誉

idioms:

• do the honours    尽主人之谊
• His Honour    阁下, 大人, 对市长法官之尊称
• honour bound    为了荣誉必须做的
• honourable mention    颁给比赛中未获大奖的优良作品之奖状, 荣誉奖
• honours degree    荣誉学位
• honours list    受表扬人员之名单, 受勋者名册
• in honour bound    在道义上应作..., 在道义上有责任...
• in honour of    为纪念, 为庆祝
• Your Honour    阁下, 大人

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 榮譽, 信用, 頭銜
v. tr. - 尊敬, 給以榮譽

idioms:

• do the honours    盡主人之誼
• His Honour    閣下, 大人, 對市長法官之尊稱
• honour bound    為了榮譽必須做的
• honourable mention    頒給比賽中未獲大獎的優良作品之獎狀, 榮譽獎
• honours degree    榮譽學位
• honours list    受表揚人員之名單, 受勛者名冊
• in honour bound    在道義上應作..., 在道義上有責任...
• in honour of    為紀念, 為慶祝
• Your Honour    閣下, 大人

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 명예, 체면, 신의, 경의
v. tr. - 존경하다, 명예를 주다

idioms:

• do the honours    주인 노릇을 하다
• in honour bound    다시 말하면
• in honour of    ~에 경의를 표하여

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 尊敬する, 名誉を与える, 引き受ける, 支払う, 名誉, 光栄, 自尊心, 面目, 名誉章, 勲章, 優等, 尊敬, 敬意, 閣下

idioms:

• (in) honour bound    面目にかけて
• do the honours    主人役を務める
• His/Your Honour    閣下
• in honour of    敬意を表して, 記念して

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) شرف, كرامه (فعل) أكرم, شرف‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮כבוד, עיטור כבוד, עמדה בכירה‬
v. tr. - ‮עמד בדברו, חלק כבוד ל-, כיבד, העריך, קלפים חזקים, ציון גבוה, מחויב (לפי כללי הכבוד)‬

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