vice1
/vʌɪs
/noun [mass noun]
1Immoral or wicked behaviour: an open sewer of vice and crime...
- Machiavelli sometimes associates these passions and desires which are inherent to human nature with vice and corruption and immoral, blameworthy, wicked, and dishonourable conduct.
- Divorce, hitherto a rarity, suddenly took off like a rocket and, as this plague of immorality and vice swept right across the western world, movie makers jumped on the bandwagon.
- Crime, vice and violence flourished, until Bow moved upmarket too and the fair was closed forever in the 1820s.
1.1Criminal activities involving prostitution, pornography, or drugs: a mobile phone network is being used to peddle vice...
- In her films, Wishman employs standard melodramatic plot lines and then inverts the parameters to impose illicit acts and criminal vice into the fray.
- And vice associated with prostitution - pimping, extortion and drug abuse - simultaneously diminished.
- The exceptions, he wrote, are those who come as warriors or spies or to spread corruption, vice and drugs.
1.2 [count noun] An immoral or wicked personal characteristic: hypocrisy is a particularly sinister vice...
- Criminalizing non-violent persons for their vices is immoral.
- Extracting money out of innocent, trusting people for these two vices was easy for him.
- Corruption as a vice affects people from all walks of life and it is important that everybody and anybody, who is willing and able, should be involved to fight the scourge that is eating at the heart of our society today.
1.3 [count noun] A weakness of character or behaviour; a bad habit: cigars happen to be my father’s vice...
- There are no caricatures; each character has his own unique blend of characteristics, strength and weaknesses, virtue and vices.
- We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions.
- In the revolutionaries' eyes, anything that made a woman look attractive was considered a vice because it distracted people from piousness and spirituality.
Synonyms
shortcoming, failing, flaw, fault, defect, weakness, weak point, deficiency, limitation, imperfection, blemish, foible, fallibility, frailty, infirmity
1.4 (also stable vice) [count noun] A bad or neurotic habit of stabled horses, typically arising as a result of boredom.Heredity may also predispose a horse to certain vices....
- Somebody turn this horse out or he'll develop stable vices!
- Some stabled horses develop abnormal behaviors called stable vices from the stress of confinement.
Derivatives
viceless
- Its main advantages were strength, ease of maintenance, and viceless flying qualities.
- This 4.6 litre unit is a real Jekyll and Hyde performer - smooth and viceless at low rpm, and a real screamer up high.
- A glance at the specifications shows that the performance was not spectacular, but the aircraft was completely viceless with respect to its flying and handling qualities.
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from Latin vitium.
In the sense of immorality vice is from Latin vitium ‘vice’, also the source of vicious (Middle English). This originally meant ‘showing vice’ but was extended to mean ‘savage’ in descriptions of bad-tempered horses (early 18th century), and later (early 19th century) to mean ‘spiteful’. The tool sense was originally a word for a screw or winch that comes via Old French vis, from Latin vitis ‘vine’ from the spiral growth of the vine's tendrils.
Rhymes
vice2
/ˈvʌɪsi/preposition
As a substitute for: the letter was drafted by David Hunt, vice Bevin who was ill
Origin
Latin, ablative of vic- 'change'.
vice3
/vʌɪs/(US vise)
noun
A metal tool with movable jaws which are used to hold an object firmly in place while work is done on it, typically attached to a workbench: hold the rail in the vice Evelyn’s fingers were like a vice...
- The vise is a workbench tool and should be firmly secured before being used.
- Dip or spray the handles and clamp a metal portion of the tool lightly into a vise and let dry.
- Lock a tool head in a vise to remove a broken handle.
Derivatives
vice-like
- Adam wrenched his vice-like grip off the cranks and gears beneath the vehicle and rolled out from the other end.
- The jaguar reached out and grabbed his wrist in a vise-like grip.
- It wasn't until foam was coming out of her mouth and she had me by the throat that the gas was wrenched from her vice-like grip.
Origin
Middle English (denoting a screw or winch): from Old French vis, from Latin vitis 'vine'.
vice4
/vʌɪs/noun informal
Short for vice president, vice admiral, etc.He said a president, his vice and other government leaders should not have a background of smoking dagga and engaging in homosexuality.