 Moral and morale from espressoenglish.net The word moral can be a noun, meaning the lesson learned from a story. It's often used in the expression, the moral of the story. The plural form, morals, refer to a person's standards of determining what is right and wrong. For example, the doctor refused to perform an abortion because it was against her morals. He has no morals whatsoever. He'll do anything and everything to get rich. Moral is also an adjective describing issues related to ethics, matters of right and wrong. For example, if you know that a child is being abused, you have a moral obligation to inform the police. We often use the word moral with obligation, responsibility, and duty. The word morale is completely different. First of all, there's a pronunciation difference between moral and morale. Moral is the state of spirit or emotions of a group of people, their general confidence and cheerfulness. For example, if a sports team has high morale, it means the members of the team are feeling good and optimistic. If morale is low among employees of a company, it means the employees are feeling negative and not motivated. This was a free sample from the new e-book, 600 Plus Confusing English Words Explained, available at espressoenglish.net. It has more than 200 pages and over 5 hours of audio to help you master these confusing words.