Talk:integrity

What is the adjective form of this word? If something/someone has integrity they are ... what?

• There doesn't seem to be one. You'll just have to use something based on a synonym - honest for example. SemperBlotto 16:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

that would be 'integer'. may not be used as such in english, but i know in dutch integer can be used as the adjective of integrity, just as integrity can be used as the noun of integer. is there really this seperation in english between the two?--lygophile08:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the usual English adjective is ethical. English integer is only a noun, meaning whole number. There is the adjective integral, but that’s a little different from integrity. —Stephen 20:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• I have heard the word 'integrous' used, but despite looking (hence finding this page) have not found a reference to validate it. (Del, 22 Feb 08)

• Yes there is one... There are quite a few. But they are not commonly used in the English language. German speakers occasionally say: "Er ist eine integre Person" - "He is an integre person". Same thing in french I believe. You can also find it on merriam-webster. Dunno if that is a reliable enough source for you. Quote: "rare or obsolete integrity adjectives: integre; integrious; integritive; and integrous ... we recommend sticking to the phrasing with integrity." http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/wftwarch.pl?110906 91.8.246.44

Please help with the numbering of number 6. It keeps appearing as 1.

Derived terms

• integrous (rare: approximately 1‱ frequency in usage)

Really? I strongly contest the inclusion of the parenthetical statement; who in the world could have come up with such a statistic without counting every time the word 'integrous' appears in the place of 'integrity'? If the fact is from analysis of Gutenburg texts, there should be a citation, otherwise it looks as though some member of the public has managed to convince himself that such an amateurish and hearsay estimate deserves note in an otherwise reputable dictionary. Furthermore, the sentence itself makes no sense: 'one-per-ten-thousand frequency' means nothing. I'd change it, but the page is protected. 79.71.106.253 23:03, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that the 'one-per-ten-thousand' bit is saying that the word appears once in every ten thousand words spoken/written. Although this figure needs citation or further explanation, I would not assume it was calculated by hearsay or in an amateurish way (In fact, statistical studies nearly always makes use of sample populations instead of studying the entire population of whatever they are studying, because it's usually quite a daunting task to include everyone). Many linguists specialize in word frequency statistics, and their methods are far from amateur. And I think it would be very rare to see 'integrous' "in place of" 'integrity', as you say, because they are not the same part of speech and a native speaker would never place them in the same syntactic context. The calculation only pertains to the frequency of 'integrous' in general in the corpus of spoken or written language.

"Integrous" is used by Dr. David R. Hawkins in his book, Truth vs. Falsehood, page 379, in the section entitled "Identification and Characteristics of Spiritual Truth, Integrous Teachers, and Teachings". There is no problem understanding his meaning of "teachers with integrity".

Order of meanings

I think the meaning "steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code" is abstract and must have appeared relatively late. It should not be the first in the list. --Providus (talk) 14:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to move the senses, but consider that the abstract sense is more common than the literal sense. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 15:10, 7 June 2017 (UTC)