Piety Meaning
/ˈpaɪ̯ɪti/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounReverence and devotion to God.
nounSimilar reverence to one's parents and family or to one's country.
Sentence Examples
Piety is the child of ignorance.
Is this what passes for piety?
CEFR Practice Quiz
The old monk's frequent prayers and fasting every day demonstrated his ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Her deep ____ was evident in the way she devoted every morning to prayer and reflection.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English piete, borrowed from Middle French pieté, from Latin pietās. See also the doublets pietà and pity. By surface analysis, pious + -ety.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Those who dwell outside of Western Establishment bastions are not idiots just because they do not mouth the pieties of GASP. Some of them can write very well. There are other traditions, you know. They could write for Wikipedia, if you let them. But such true openness and genuine tolerance is unacceptable, precisely because those other traditions fail to pay exclusive homage to GASP sources, through which—Wikipedians imagine—all the benefits of global civilization flow."
— 2025 September 30, Larry Sanger, “2. Enable competing articles.”, in larrysanger.org:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The old monk's frequent prayers and fasting every day demonstrated his ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Her deep ____ was evident in the way she devoted every morning to prayer and reflection.