Righteousness

Righteousness is the quality or state of "being morally right or justifiable"^[1] rooted in religious or divine law with a broader spectrum of moral correctness, justice, and virtuous living as dictated by a higher authority or set of spiritual beliefs.[1] Rectitude, often a synonym for righteousness, is about personal moral values and the internal compass that guides an individual’s decisions and actions.^[1] It can be found in Indian, Chinese, and Abrahamic religions and traditions, among others, as a theological concept. For example, from various perspectives in Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism it is an attribute that implies that a person's actions are justified, and can have the connotation that the person has been "judged" as living a moral life, relative to the religion’s doctrines.

William Tyndale (translator of the Bible into English in 1526) remodeled the word after an earlier word rihtwis, which would have yielded modern English *rightwise or *rightways. He used it to translate the Hebrew root צדק tzedek, which appears over five hundred times in the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek word δίκαιος (dikaios), which appears more than two hundred times in the New Testament.

Etymologically, it comes from Old English rihtwīs, from riht 'right' + wīs 'manner, state, condition' (as opposed to wrangwīs, "wrongful"^[2]). The change in the ending of the word in the 16th century was due to association with words such as bounteous.^[1]