Righteous

How to spell righteous

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce righteous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does righteous mean?

1. adjectiveMorally right or justified, especially in acting against wrongdoing.

Righteous in a sentence

• The campaigners felt a righteous anger at the company's pollution.

• He spoke in a righteous tone about the importance of fairness at work.

Where does righteous come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word goes back to the Old English rihtwis, a compound built from riht, meaning 'right' or 'just', and wis, meaning 'wise' or 'way', so its earliest sense was something like 'wise in what is right' or 'living the right way'. Over the medieval centuries the spelling drifted and was reshaped, and by the late 1500s scribes had remodelled the ending to match the common Latin-derived suffix -ous, giving the modern righteous. That refashioning is exactly why the word looks so odd today: the original second element wis was effectively swallowed and disguised as a French-style adjective ending. Because of this history the spelling keeps the whole word 'right' intact at the front, which is a useful memory anchor, and then adds the unexpected -eous rather than a simpler -ous. The related noun righteousness preserves the same pattern, and the now-archaic word rightwise survived alongside it for a time before fading away.

How the word is built

• right (just, correct)
• -eous (adjectival suffix, an altered form of -ous)