All 7 Uses
scruples
in
Billy Budd
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- For whether it was because the other men when ranged before him showed to ill advantage after Billy, or whether he had some scruples in view of the merchantman being rather short-handed, however it might be, the officer contented himself with his first spontaneous choice.†
Chpt 1
- Such sanctioned irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Government would hardly think to parade at the time, and which consequently, and as affecting the least influential class of mankind, have all but dropped into oblivion, lend color to something for the truth whereof I do not vouch, and hence have some scruple in stating; something I remember having seen in print, though the book I can not recall; but the same thing was personally communicated to me now more than forty years ago by an old pensioner in a cocked hat with whom I had a most interesting talk on the terrace at Greenwich, a Baltimore Negro, a Trafalgar man.†
Chpt 8scruple = an ethical or moral principle that discourages certain kinds of action
- But it was only a partial and anonymous account that Billy gave, the unfounded scruples above referred to preventing full disclosure to anybody.†
Chpt 15 *
- What he said was to this effect: "Hitherto I have been but the witness, little more; and I should hardly think now to take another tone, that of your coadjutor, for the time, did I not perceive in you,—at the crisis too—a troubled hesitancy, proceeding, I doubt not, from the clash of military duty with moral scruple—scruple vitalized by compassion.†
Chpt 21scruple = an ethical or moral principle that discourages certain kinds of action
- What he said was to this effect: "Hitherto I have been but the witness, little more; and I should hardly think now to take another tone, that of your coadjutor, for the time, did I not perceive in you,—at the crisis too—a troubled hesitancy, proceeding, I doubt not, from the clash of military duty with moral scruple—scruple vitalized by compassion.†
Chpt 21
- But, mindful of paramount obligations I strive against scruples that may tend to enervate decision.†
Chpt 21
- But your scruples: do they move as in a dusk?†
Chpt 21
Definitions:
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(1)
(scruples) principles that discourage certain kinds of action
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely, scruple can be used as a verb meaning "hesitate on moral grounds" as in "He lied and did not even scruple about it."
Even more rarely and archaically, at one time a scruple was a measure of weight equal to 20 grains (about 1.3 grams).