Crossword clues for scruple
scruple
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Scruple \Scru"ple\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Scrupled; p. pr. & vb. n. Scrupling.] To be reluctant or to hesitate, as regards an action, on account of considerations of conscience or expedience.
We are often over-precise, scrupling to say or do those
things which lawfully we may.
--Fuller.
Men scruple at the lawfulness of a set form of divine
worship.
--South.
Scruple \Scru"ple\, v. t.
-
To regard with suspicion; to hesitate at; to question.
Others long before them . . . scrupled more the books of heretics than of gentiles.
--Milton. -
To excite scruples in; to cause to scruple. [R.]
Letters which did still scruple many of them.
--E. Symmons.
Scruple \Scru"ple\, n. [L. scrupulus a small sharp or pointed stone, the twenty-fourth part of an ounce, a scruple, uneasiness, doubt, dim. of scrupus a rough or sharp stone, anxiety, uneasiness; perh. akin to Gr. ? the chippings of stone, ? a razor, Skr. kshura: cf. F. scrupule.]
A weight of twenty grains; the third part of a dram.
-
Hence, a very small quantity; a particle.
I will not bate thee a scruple.
--Shak. -
Hesitation as to action from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience.
He was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples.
--Macaulay.To make scruple, to hesitate from conscientious motives; to scruple.
--Locke.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"to have or make scruples," 1620s, from scruple (n.). Related: Scrupled; scrupling.
"moral misgiving, pang of conscience," late 14c., from Old French scrupule (14c.), from Latin scrupulus "uneasiness, anxiety, pricking of conscience," literally "small sharp stone," diminutive of scrupus "sharp stone or pebble," used figuratively by Cicero for a cause of uneasiness or anxiety, probably from the notion of having a pebble in one's shoe. The word in the more literal Latin sense of "small unit of weight or measurement" is attested in English from late 14c.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context obsolete English) A weight of twenty grains; the third part of a dram. 2 (context obsolete English) Hence, a very small quantity; a particle. 3 Hesitation as to action from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience. 4 (context obsolete English) A doubt or uncertainty concerning a matter of fact; intellectual perplexity. 5 A measurement of time. Hebrew culture broke the hour into 1080 scruples. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To be reluctant or to hesitate, as regards an action, on account of considerations of conscience or expedience. 2 To regard with suspicion; to hesitate at; to question. 3 (context obsolete English) To doubt; to question; to hesitate to believe; to question the truth of (a fact, etc.). 4 To excite scruples in; to cause to scruple.
WordNet
v. hesitate on moral grounds; "The man scrupled to perjure himself"
raise scruples; "He lied and did not even scruple about it"
have doubts about
Wikipedia
The scruple (℈) is a small unit in the apothecaries' system, derived from the old Roman ( "small pebble") unit (scrupulus/scrupulum).
Scruples is usually an English synonym for conscience.
Scruple(s) may also refer to:
In arts and entertainment:- Scruples (novel), a 1978 novel by Judith Krantz
- Scruples (miniseries), based on the novel by Judith Krantz, starring Lindsay Wagner, made in 1980
- Scruples (comic strip), created by Joseph Young, Jr. in 1989
- Scruples (2012 film), starring Chad Michael Murray
- Scruples (game), by Henry Makow in 1984 based on ethical dilemmas
- Scruple (unit), a small unit (℈) of apothecary weight (/ oz.) derived from the Roman system
- Scrupulosity, or "religious scruples", obsessive concern with one's own sins and compulsive performance of religious devotion
Usage examples of "scruple".
As to the advice you give me that if some honest person would pay me my rent, or at least a part of it, I should have no scruples about taking it because a little more, or a little less, would be of little importance .
Boyle also did not scruple to perform his own experiments and, on one occasion in my presence, even showed himself willing to anatomize a rat with his very own hands.
Broken hearted over these letters, Camilla spent her time in their perpetual perusal, in wiping from them her tears, and pressing with fond anguish to her lips the signature of her hapless sister, self-beguiled by her own credulous goodness, and self-devoted by her conscientious scruples.
In the delicious contemplation of Hortensia in tears beside him stricken all but to the point of death, he forgot entirely his erstwhile scruples that being nameless he had no name to offer her.
Even when these sounds had faded into silence, she remained where she was, hoping that Melia might fall asleep, so that she could enter the hut they shared unheard and unquestioned, but finally pain and thirst overcame her scruples and she staggered dazedly across the moonlit clearing, seeking the only sanctuary she knew.
The existing situation affecting Montayne was too critical, too important, for that kind of scruples anymore.
I put you in the worst bed, and allowed you the burnt meat and the sodden bread, and the valise to carry twice as often as I took it myself, to satisfy your plaguy scruples?
I spare the reader a narration of the terrible struggles which nature, conscience, all scruples and prepossessions of education and of blood, held with this resolution, the unholiness of which I endeavoured to clothe with the name of justice to Isora.
So I told him that as he could not, from scruples of conscience, join me in privateering, of course his scruples of conscience could not allow him to keep the books, and I dismissed him.
I have not the scruples which you have relative to privateering, but still I respect the conscientious scruples of others.
As her father recovered, she told Philip that he had expressed himself very strongly as to his conduct towards me, and had acknowledged that I was right in my scruples, and that he was astonished that he had not viewed privateering in the same light that I did.
In Scotland the Jacobites made no scruple of professing their principles and attachments to the pretender.
When the forces of lovelessness and greed had built up our own sordid capitalist systems, driven by invisible proprietorship, robbing the poor, defacing the earth, and forcing themselves as a universal curse even on the generous and humane, then religion and law and intellect, which would never themselves have discovered such systems, their natural bent being towards welfare, economy, and life instead of towards corruption, waste, and death, nevertheless did not scruple to seize by fraud and force these powers of evil on presence of using them for good.
Athos: aconite, resorted to by increasing doses of grains and scruples as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia: the face in death of a septuagenarian, suicide by poison.
The scruples of the first crusaders had neglected the fairest opportunities of securing, by the possession of Constantinople, the way to the Holy Land: domestic revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the East.