scruple.
Hesitation to act from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; doubt, hesitation or unwillingness due to motives of conscience; moral qualm.
Meaning & usage
Hesitation to act from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; doubt, hesitation or unwillingness due to motives of conscience; moral qualm.
A weight of ¹⁄₂₈₈ of a pound, that is, twenty grains or one third of a dram, about 1.3 grams (symbol: ℈).
A Hebrew unit of time equal to ¹⁄₁₀₈₀ hour.
A very small quantity; a particle.
A doubt or uncertainty concerning a matter of fact; intellectual perplexity.
Where this word comes from
From Old French scrupule, from Latin scrūpulus (“(literally) a small sharp or pointed stone; uneasiness of mind, anxiety, doubt, trouble; scruple”) and scrūpulum (“one twenty-fourth of an ounce”), diminutives of scrūpus (“a rough or sharp stone; anxiety, uneasiness”); perhaps akin to Ancient Greek σκύρος (skúros, “the chippings of stone”), from ξυρόν (xurón, “razor”), from ξύω (xúō, “to scrape”), from Proto-Indo-European *ksew-. Doublet of escropulo and escrupulo.
To hesitate or be reluctant to act due to considerations of conscience or expedience.
They wouldn't scruple to cheat us if given the opportunity.
To excite scruples in; to cause to scruple.
To regard with suspicion; to question.
To question the truth of (a fact, etc.); to doubt; to hesitate to believe, to question.
I do not scruple to admit that all the Earth seeth but only half of the Moon.
Where this word comes from
From Old French scrupule, from Latin scrūpulus (“(literally) a small sharp or pointed stone; uneasiness of mind, anxiety, doubt, trouble; scruple”) and scrūpulum (“one twenty-fourth of an ounce”), diminutives of scrūpus (“a rough or sharp stone; anxiety, uneasiness”); perhaps akin to Ancient Greek σκύρος (skúros, “the chippings of stone”), from ξυρόν (xurón, “razor”), from ξύω (xúō, “to scrape”), from Proto-Indo-European *ksew-. Doublet of escropulo and escrupulo.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.