All 5 Uses of
righteous
in
Moby Dick
- Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning.†
Chpt 91-93unrighteous = morally wrongstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unrighteous means not and reverses the meaning of righteous. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope.†
Chpt 97-99 *righteousness = morally correct behavior
- Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man!†
Chpt 40-42
- Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms.†
Chpt 70-72
- But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade of his midship oarsman.†
Chpt 79-81
Definitions:
-
(1)
(righteous as in: a righteous cause) morally correct; or morally justified
or:
acting or feeling morally superior -- especially when it isn't true (this meaning is more typically seen as a compound word beginning with "self-") -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Less commonly, righteous is used as a synonym for wonderful.