ethos

Noun

1. The character or fundamental values of a person, people, culture, or movement.
   • To slip past censors, Chinese bloggers have become masters of comic subterfuge, cloaking their messages in protective layers of irony and satire. This is not a new concept, but it has erupted so powerfully that it now...
   • As we saw with Housing Problems, this 'telling one's own story' is an ethos Edgar Anstey would have applauded, and it was an ethos that has fed into Network Rail's work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Green explains:...
   • Through all their projects, their abiding ethos has been observing and responding to the site and its existing ecology and growth patterns. - 2026 May 5, Cyrus Dunham, “Nature's Way”, in Architectural Digest, volume 83,...
2. A form of rhetoric in which the writer or speaker invokes their authority, competence or expertise in an attempt to persuade others that their view is correct.
3. The traits in a work of art which express the ideal or typic character, as influenced by the ethos (character or fundamental values) of a people, rather than emotional situations or individual character traits in a narrow sense; opposed to pathos.