virtues

vir·tue  (vûrch)

n.

1.

a. Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness.

b. An example or kind of moral excellence: the virtue of patience.

2. Chastity, especially in a woman.

3. A particularly efficacious, good, or beneficial quality; advantage: a plan with the virtue of being practical.

4. Effective force or power: believed in the virtue of prayer.

5. virtues Christianity The fifth of the nine orders of angels in medieval angelology.

6. Obsolete Manly courage; valor.

Idiom:

by/in virtue of

On the grounds or basis of; by reason of: well-off by virtue of a large inheritance.

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[Middle English vertu, from Old French, from Latin virts, manliness, excellence, goodness, from vir, man; see w-ro- in Indo-European roots.]

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virtues [ˈvɜːtjuːz -tʃuːz]

pl n

(Christian Religious Writings / Theology) (often capital) the fifth of the nine orders into which the angels are traditionally divided in medieval angelology