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Morals Versus Morale · I Hate Talking

• 0:29
  I Hate Talking: Welcome to episode 77 of I Hate Talking.
• 0:33
  I Hate Talking: Hi everyone.
• 0:33
  I Hate Talking: So today's word or phrase is two words that I've been thinking about and wondering if they have the same root word.
• 0:42
  I Hate Talking: So those two words are morals and morale.
• 0:48
  I Hate Talking: OK, hm, morals and morale.
• 0:52
  I Hate Talking: So are you getting the definitions confused?
• 0:55
  I Hate Talking: Well, in my head I'm trying to say that, I guess I have to say them out loud or something.
• 1:00
  I Hate Talking: So morals would be like, he has good morals.
• 1:04
  I Hate Talking: He chooses well, right?
• 1:08
  I Hate Talking: Chooses proper.
• 1:09
  I Hate Talking: And then what was the other one?
• 1:11
  I Hate Talking: Morale, morale.
• 1:12
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, so morale is more like an attitude, right?
• 1:15
  I Hate Talking: Like the morale in the workplace is bad, like the attitude or the feelings overall, one way or another, right?
• 1:25
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I think so.
• 1:27
  I Hate Talking: I would have similar definitions, so morals being some sort of inner scruples by which you behave, and it may not always be quote unquote good.
• 1:39
  I Hate Talking: You could have bad morals, so there's still some sort of standard or way of behaving that is intrinsic to that person.
• 1:47
  I Hate Talking: And that is their moral code or their morals, and it can be good according to society or absolute truth or it could be bad.
• 1:57
  I Hate Talking: But nonetheless, they are morals just the same.
• 2:01
  I Hate Talking: OK, yeah, I agree.
• 2:03
  I Hate Talking: And then morale, I think, like you said, would be an attitude, a perhaps outlook on a particular situation or scenario, sort of, again, I think getting at the intrinsic feeling that one has towards that particular scenario or situation.
• 2:20
  I Hate Talking: And again, that could be bad morale, so you could have low morale where their outlook is not very good.
• 2:26
  I Hate Talking: And the feeling about a situation is poor versus good or high morale, where you have a positive outlook on the situation or the scenario that you're dealing with.
• 2:39
  I Hate Talking: Right, and it's tricky as um it's interesting you brought this up, because in my head when I say it, like the story had a good moral, like it had a good lesson, you learned something or taught something, but it sounds very similar to morale, morale.
• 2:56
  I Hate Talking: Morale, I think they're actually very different.
• 3:00
  I Hate Talking: So that's what I'm gonna say.
• 3:03
  I Hate Talking: So you think they're different root words?
• 3:06
  I Hate Talking: Yes, OK, they sound alike, but they're different.
• 3:09
  I Hate Talking: So I've not looked these up.
• 3:11
  I Hate Talking: I've been thinking about them a little bit in terms of how I would define them without any consultation from any dictionaries or reference material, but we'll go ahead and look up the official definitions and then look at the etymology of morals and morale.
• 3:27
  I Hate Talking: So I am of the opinion that it's probably the same root word, but we'll get to that in a moment.
• 3:34
  I Hate Talking: We'll check the official definitions first.
• 3:36
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 3:37
  I Hate Talking: -- One of us is going to be -- right, I suppose so.
• 3:39
  I Hate Talking: So the definition of moral, according to our favorite Oxford language dictionary, can be used as a noun regarding a lesson.
• 3:49
  I Hate Talking: So you did mention that, that the story would have a good moral or lesson, and that lesson, it says, quote, is especially one concerning what is right or prudent that can be derived from a story, a piece of information, or an experience, end quote.
• 4:04
  I Hate Talking: And then the second noun is a person's standards of behaviors or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.
• 4:16
  I Hate Talking: Yep, OK, so I think we're right on that.
• 4:19
  I Hate Talking: All right, so we'll check now the definition of morale.
• 4:23
  I Hate Talking: Which is the same exact spelling in English, but just the letter E added at the end.
• 4:29
  I Hate Talking: And again, our favorite Oxford language dictionary defines that as a noun that says the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time.
• 4:39
  I Hate Talking: OK, yeah, similar to what we're saying like the attitude of a group or feeling, OK.
• 4:45
  I Hate Talking: All right, so we'll do the same order for etymology.
• 4:49
  I Hate Talking: So, first looking at moral, that comes from the Latin mos more moss, and that then became used within Latin as just morales and moralia and then came to be used in the late Middle English.
• 5:08
  I Hate Talking: And then it seems like this particular word was.
• 5:13
  I Hate Talking: Especially used within a Latin work by Saint Gregory that was called Moralia, and it was an exposition on the book of Job.
• 5:23
  I Hate Talking: So that particular author used that.
• 5:27
  I Hate Talking: Exact phrase moralia, which was taken from the Latin term morales as sort of the description of how Joe behaved in that particular story, -- I -- suppose.
• 5:40
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, like a lesson that we can learn, I guess, right?
• 5:43
  I Hate Talking: Precisely.
• 5:43
  I Hate Talking: So now looking at the etymology of morale.
• 5:48
  I Hate Talking: It comes from the French, apparently exclusively, and it is spelled the exact same as moral in French.
• 5:57
  I Hate Talking: So M O R A L, then in the mid 18th century became in English morale, and it says here that it was specifically respelled to preserve the final stress in pronunciation.
• 6:12
  I Hate Talking: So the French would have said that particular spelling, M O R A L as morale.
• 6:19
  I Hate Talking: So in English, they added that E so that that particular stress on the final syllable was preserved.
• 6:26
  I Hate Talking: OK, interesting.
• 6:27
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, that makes sense, because even once you said it's French, I'm like, oh yeah, because of the ending, that's interesting they added it later on so that we would not lose the emphasis.
• 6:38
  I Hate Talking: And according to Merriam-Webster's, it apparently just came out of French by itself.
• 6:43
  I Hate Talking: There is no really previous etymology to speak of.
• 6:48
  I Hate Talking: Well, -- so I -- won.
• 6:50
  I Hate Talking: You did.
• 6:51
  I Hate Talking: Nice.
• 6:52
  I Hate Talking: So very different words and you're correct, very different sources.
• 6:58
  I Hate Talking: And in fact, I guess they had to add the e to morale so that it was not confused with moral.
• 7:05
  I Hate Talking: Interesting.
• 7:06
  I Hate Talking: So it doesn't have a root word or anything.
• 7:09
  I Hate Talking: It's a strictly created word in French.
• 7:12
  I Hate Talking: Is that what I understand it to be?
• 7:14
  I Hate Talking: Apparently, it says here that 1752 was the first known usage of the word morale.
• 7:22
  I Hate Talking: And before that, it did not have any particular historical etymology recorded, and that's really all that I suppose we know about it based on what the dictionary editors have recorded for this particular word's etymology.
• 7:42
  I Hate Talking: Cool, that's so interesting, and I'm glad I won.
• 7:46
  I Hate Talking: Indeed, so.
• 7:48
  I Hate Talking: I am surprised because I expected it to be the same root word cause it has a little bit of the same aspect in my mind where morals is behavior and morale is outlook that perhaps could impact your behavior.
• 8:02
  I Hate Talking: But I stand corrected, they are apparently completely unrelated.
• 8:06
  I Hate Talking: Interesting, and I think, I mean, I know it's not a hom a homiment ho ho.
• 8:14
  I Hate Talking: How do you say that word?
• 8:16
  I Hate Talking: Hama man.
• 8:17
  I Hate Talking: Ho -- homonym -- homonym.
• 8:23
  I Hate Talking: Oh, I get, I'm getting caught up with that in the middle there.
• 8:27
  I Hate Talking: Anyways, it's not right, but it sounds like it.
• 8:31
  I Hate Talking: It reminds me of like 8 and 8 back.
• 8:34
  I Hate Talking: The animal or bat in baseball.
• 8:39
  I Hate Talking: So it's interesting that in English, we have a lot of those things here and here.
• 8:45
  I Hate Talking: Either they spell are spelled the same or sound the same.
• 8:50
  I Hate Talking: So it's interesting that we took the next step to distinguish moral and morale.
• 8:57
  I Hate Talking: Indeed, yeah, often, right?
• 9:00
  I Hate Talking: I mean, they just leave it and you just have to figure it out by context or whatnot.
• 9:05
  I Hate Talking: So it's interesting that they didn't do that this time.
• 9:07
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, we had an episode quite a long time ago about synonyms and homonyms and antonyms, I think.
• 9:13
  I Hate Talking: I don't remember what the title of that was.
• 9:16
  I Hate Talking: Maybe we'll have to find that episode and link it in the show notes, but that was.
• 9:19
  I Hate Talking: Maybe even from our single digit episodes, I don't remember, -- but -- this wouldn't be a ho ho oh no homament.
• 9:27
  I Hate Talking: I can't I say it tonight?
• 9:32
  I Hate Talking: Eminem.
• 9:33
  I Hate Talking: Yes, this isn't that though, right?
• 9:35
  I Hate Talking: This is not a homonym because they specifically added the e to the end of morale so that it would not be confused and Both probably would have been pronounced moral and you had to use context to figure out if they were talking about one's personal beliefs in terms of what behavior is acceptable versus the particular outlook of a person or group based on a situation.
• 10:00
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I'm glad they did because just in context, like nowadays speech, it would be confusing if you read something or if you heard a CEO say the group morals are really good.
• 10:11
  I Hate Talking: You're like, wait, they do really good stuff.
• 10:14
  I Hate Talking: They do a lot of charity work, or they're happy people, and they're upbeat, you know, so it means something different when he says the group's morale is good.
• 10:24
  I Hate Talking: That is very true.
• 10:25
  I Hate Talking: I could see how it would be very confusing from context even to determine which it was, right, because both of those make sense, but they mean very different things.
• 10:34
  I Hate Talking: Very true.
• 10:36
  I Hate Talking: So, that is our word or phrase of the episode, moral and morale, and I think we were pretty close on the definitions, not too far off on that, but pretty, I was anyway, pretty far off on the supposed etymology because I would have expected it to be something from the Latin that described feelings and personal outlooks on behavior and.
• 10:59
  I Hate Talking: The possibility of success for different situations that 1 may find them in.
• 11:05
  I Hate Talking: Right, well, it makes sense that, like you were saying, you assume the root word is the same.
• 11:11
  I Hate Talking: So when professionally or personally, have you mistaken something?
• 11:17
  I Hate Talking: For either the same word or the same meaning or the same intention.
• 11:24
  I Hate Talking: But they were completely different.
• 11:26
  I Hate Talking: Hm, that's an interesting question.
• 11:28
  I Hate Talking: Nothing immediately comes to mind.
• 11:30
  I Hate Talking: I'm sure there have been instances.
• 11:33
  I Hate Talking: That this has happened either by something that I've said that was misinterpreted or something that somebody else said that I did not completely understand appropriately based on their context or their word usage, and it probably could have been either scenario where they used a completely different word than what they intended or like we were talking about some word that was similar in nature or a homonym.
• 11:58
  I Hate Talking: Mhm.
• 11:58
  I Hate Talking: But I cannot think of one single specific instance off the top of my head.
• 12:04
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 12:05
  I Hate Talking: What about you?
• 12:06
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I'm sure I've got tons.
• 12:09
  I Hate Talking: Give me a sec.
• 12:11
  I Hate Talking: Well, there is one that's not exactly.
• 12:15
  I Hate Talking: The same word or a different word used, but it was more of a contextual thing where I completely misunderstood what a person was asking.
• 12:27
  I Hate Talking: So this particular scenario happened at a campout for Cub Scouts and This was one of our overnight weekend campouts that we did, and there's a number of different activities, so we have games, we have campfire, we have skits, we have songs, etc.
• 12:47
  I Hate Talking: etc.
• 12:48
  I Hate Talking: And one of the other den leaders came up to me and asked the group of us that were standing there if anyone had jumper cables.
• 12:59
  I Hate Talking: And this was right about the same time that we were preparing for our skits and making sure that all the scouts knew their lines and had the appropriate things that they needed to perform the skits.
• 13:10
  I Hate Talking: And I thought he was asking because he needed it for a prop for the skit.
• 13:15
  I Hate Talking: I was like, do you need it for a skit?
• 13:18
  I Hate Talking: And then he replied, No, my truck's dead.
• 13:21
  I Hate Talking: Oh no, at least he told you versus like being like nope, and then walking away and having to call Triple A or something because you did have them, right?
• 13:32
  I Hate Talking: Yes, I went and got the jumper cables and he was able to successfully start his vehicle that the battery had died in, but I completely missed the context because we were doing our skit planning and I thought he just needed a prop, but he actually legitimately needed jumper cables for their specific intended purpose to jump his battery.
• 13:54
  I Hate Talking: Did he seem confused when you asked that?
• 13:57
  I Hate Talking: No, he was pretty quick on the uptake that he responded with the fact that his truck was dead.
• 14:02
  I Hate Talking: Yeah.
• 14:03
  I Hate Talking: Cause yeah, you definitely don't want a bunch of little kids playing with those wires, especially in the dirt and stuff, like, it's even like, I don't want to give that for a prop.
• 14:14
  I Hate Talking: But also why it's interesting that he would, to your defense, you guys were all working on your skits at that time.
• 14:23
  I Hate Talking: And he probably didn't need his vehicle, like you guys weren't going anywhere.
• 14:29
  I Hate Talking: So it's interesting that he even noticed his vehicle was dead at that point.
• 14:32
  I Hate Talking: So after that, how did you guys proceed?
• 14:37
  I Hate Talking: Was there any like awkwardness or was it like y'all laughed it off, or how did that go?
• 14:42
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I think everybody had a brief laugh and then we went and got the jumper cables and I gave it to him and he was able to take care of what needed to be taken care of and return them posthaste, and that was it.
• 14:53
  I Hate Talking: Did you feel any like embarrassment or any like, oh, whoops, I misread it?
• 14:58
  I Hate Talking: Or not really.
• 14:59
  I Hate Talking: Not in this particular situation because it was more of a Light banter and not necessarily a serious situation per se.
• 15:07
  I Hate Talking: So, in that particular scenario, then there was no particular embarrassment in that case.
• 15:15
  I Hate Talking: I feel like there's a lot of times for me that I get embarrassed or ashamed, and I think our dynamic for us is often I misunderstand something or people misunderstand me.
• 15:29
  I Hate Talking: And then you end up being like the mediator.
• 15:33
  I Hate Talking: Like I'll leave something and then I'll say something about it later, and then you have to like explain the context, or like, I'm like, oh, I missed that.
• 15:40
  I Hate Talking: I didn't understand what they meant.
• 15:42
  I Hate Talking: OK, so I'm not gonna say the name because 11 big thing I teach my kids is we don't tease people or like make fun of names, that's very personal and cultural, so I wouldn't say that.
• 15:57
  I Hate Talking: But there was one that comes to my mind for us relatively recently that happened and I misunderstood what this individual's accent, what his name was.
• 16:07
  I Hate Talking: And I didn't say anything, because luckily over the years I've learned to try not to put my foot in my mouth as much as I used to.
• 16:15
  I Hate Talking: But I remember asking you afterwards, like, his name is blah blah blah, and you were like, no, and I just completely was like, oh, like it went over my head that like, I just thought it was such an odd name, but it was my misunderstanding of him.
• 16:32
  I Hate Talking: So I think that kind of happens a lot in conversations because everybody has their own culture, their own background, and then you go into conversations with other people.
• 16:41
  I Hate Talking: And we're burning, whether you try, you know, some people are better at it than others.
• 16:47
  I Hate Talking: But no matter how good you are, you still are bringing your background and your preconceived ideas into any conversation you have.
• 16:56
  I Hate Talking: So then I think it's hard to know when to hold your opinions or thoughts, maybe, or judge or do a double take or whatnot.
• 17:09
  I Hate Talking: So then what you're saying, I guess, in a way is that you need good morals in order to speak and interpret other people's speech appropriately.
• 17:21
  I Hate Talking: So that you don't hurt the morale.
• 17:23
  I Hate Talking: There you go, look at that full circle.
• 17:26
  I Hate Talking: Yes, because even if you don't agree with their morals, like this person's name.
• 17:31
  I Hate Talking: It threw me for a loop because I instantly thought of something else, like, wow, why would you name your child that?
• 17:38
  I Hate Talking: But it actually had a good meaning when we found out later about it.
• 17:43
  I Hate Talking: So even though I felt like my morals told me, oh, don't do that.
• 17:49
  I Hate Talking: There was background that I didn't know, and they actually had good morals for their name.
• 17:55
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 17:57
  I Hate Talking: So, yeah, I guess maybe perhaps I will reflect on this particular question that you posed at the start of our topic after our word or phrase section to see if I can think of any other particular times that there has been a particular word or context that has been misunderstood either when I was speaking or when other people were speaking to me.
• 18:21
  I Hate Talking: But again, nothing comes immediately to mind.
• 18:24
  I Hate Talking: But I also think that it probably does happen frequently, and maybe that's why I don't particularly remember these things is that they sort of get.
• 18:31
  I Hate Talking: Categorized and filed away as things to avoid in the future and that helps me be more precise with my particular speech as well as perhaps be a little bit more understanding to others in terms of how they are speaking if there's perhaps like you said, different cultural backgrounds, perhaps different words that they use on a more regular basis that may not match my own.
• 18:58
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I agree.
• 19:00
  I Hate Talking: There's certain things that come to my mind I can think of instantly.
• 19:03
  I Hate Talking: From my past that will bring up like shame or a lesson I learned from it.
• 19:10
  I Hate Talking: But there's not that many.
• 19:12
  I Hate Talking: But were those things in your past based on actions or words of speech?
• 19:17
  I Hate Talking: I feel like most were words that either I didn't come across properly or I said something after someone's actions.
• 19:27
  I Hate Talking: I'm like, oh, like I misread the situation.
• 19:32
  I Hate Talking: Well, there you go.
• 19:33
  I Hate Talking: So I guess it's through talking that we begin the journey to understanding, but that talking needs to be with precise speech that is properly understood based on context and words that are used.
• 19:45
  I Hate Talking: And we all can have good morals and good morale.
• 19:49
  I Hate Talking: From it.
• 19:50
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I like good morale.
• 19:52
  I Hate Talking: It's hard when people don't have good morale.
• 19:55
  I Hate Talking: Which is more important though, morale or morals?
• 19:58
  I Hate Talking: For an individual, I think.
• 20:00
  I Hate Talking: Morals is better.
• 20:02
  I Hate Talking: But Man, and this isn't impact you, so I think it's different that I guess we could have talked about this for a long while because I think it's different.
• 20:13
  I Hate Talking: I don't think other people's morale affects you as much, but it definitely affects me.
• 20:19
  I Hate Talking: When I'm with like Debbie Downers or people that are low energy or very negative, it definitely impacts me and bums me out a lot.
• 20:30
  I Hate Talking: And on the contrast, when I'm with people that are happy or think positively.
• 20:35
  I Hate Talking: I'm much more positive and upbeat.
• 20:39
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 20:41
  I Hate Talking: So perhaps that is something that we can get into in our next episode, episode 78, or perhaps you, our listeners would like to share a particular story or anecdote where you had a particular scenario that a specific word was used that was taken out of context or maybe it was a homonym and it was completely misunderstood.
• 21:03
  I Hate Talking: But to answer that question simply for the end of this episode.
• 21:07
  I Hate Talking: Morals above all morale.
• 21:11
  I Hate Talking: No questions.
• 21:12
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 21:14
  I Hate Talking: So, from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.