The word virtue illustrates a change in meaning over centuries that relates closely to the values and perceptions prevailing at the time. Deriving from the Latin vir meaning man, the word virtus originally denoted all qualities associated with manliness but, since courage and prowess in war were so important to the Romans, it specialised to mean bravery. The need for a more general term caused it to widen again to mean all good attributes, perhaps influenced by Greek cultural concepts. Another tendency was for it to refer to an object as in the potency of a drug.
The word entered English via French with the sense of any excellent quality, mental, physical or moral. In the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer writes of how April showers bathe the veins of plants in a liquid:
Of which vertu engendred is the flour.
By Elizabethan times it had come to mean excellence of any kind, including gracefulness in dancing. Othello praises Desdemona's skills and love of life, adding, (in an uncharacteristic play on words)
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.
The recent tendency has been to confine the word to moral probity and even to the chastity of a virtuous woman.
From the macho masculinity of a Roman soldier to the maidenly behaviour of a Victorian lady involved a total switch of gender. Incidentally, I have not heard the word for a long time, except perhaps in: the virtue of paracetamol is that it's cheap and effective. Back to that earlier sense then.
Time for a virtuous CUPPA to restore all our excellent virtues.
