Till the world from his perfection fell Into all
filth and foul iniquity. --Spenser.
2. An iniquitous act or thing; a deed of injustice o?
unrighteousness; a sin; a crime. --Milton.
Your iniquities have separated between you and your
God. --Is. lix. 2.
3. A character or personification in the old English
moralities, or moral dramas, having the name sometimes of
one vice and sometimes of another. See {Vice}.
Acts old Iniquity, and in the fit Of miming gets the
opinion of a wit. --B. Jonson.
Withouten vice of syllable or letter. --Chaucer.
Mark the vice of the procedure. --Sir W.
Hamilton.
2. A moral fault or failing; especially, immoral conduct or
habit, as in the indulgence of degrading appetites;
customary deviation in a single respect, or in general,
from a right standard, implying a defect of natural
character, or the result of training and habits; a harmful
custom; immorality; depravity; wickedness; as, a life of
vice; the vice of intemperance.
I do confess the vices of my blood. --Shak.
Ungoverned appetite . . . a brutish vice. --Milton.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The
post of honor is a private station. --Addison.
3. The buffoon of the old English moralities, or moral
dramas, having the name sometimes of one vice, sometimes
of another, or of Vice itself; -- called also {Iniquity}.
Note: This character was grotesquely dressed in a cap with
ass's ears, and was armed with a dagger of lath: one of
his chief employments was to make sport with the Devil,
leaping on his back, and belaboring him with the dagger
of lath till he made him roar. The Devil, however,
always carried him off in the end. --Nares.
How like you the Vice in the play? . . . I would
not give a rush for a Vice that has not a wooden
dagger to snap at everybody. --B. Jonson.
Syn: Crime; sin; iniquity; fault. See {Crime}.