ethics, morals

Ethics is used to refer to a system of moral principles, as one might mention "legal ethics," "medical ethics," or "the ethics of this community." Morals refers to standards or accepted customs of conduct and generally applies to right living in a society. It is not incorrect to refer, as one linguist has done, to ethics as the science, business, and practice of morals and to morals as the practice of ethics. Today, morals is more likely to have a religious application than ethics and often has a sexual connotation that ethics rarely has. To say that someone is a person of the highest ethics implies that he or she is honorable and upright in his or her private life and business dealings. To call someone a person of the highest morals would likely suggest that he or she is not guilty of sexual laxity. When meaning the moral sciences as a whole, ethics is a plural noun. It may be used with a singular verb when it refers to fitness or propriety: "The ethics of his decision is (or are) debatable." The adjective form is always ethical, not ethic, which is the singular form of the noun.