Amoral or immoral?
amoral is an adjective meaning “Done without consideration for morality or immorality”; immoral is an adjective meaning “Breaching principles of natural law, rectitude, or justice, and so inconsistent…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) immoral is about 6.5 times as common as amoral.
What is the difference between amoral and immoral?
| amoral | immoral | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective | adjective |
| Meaning | Done without consideration for morality or immorality Not believing in or caring for morality and immorality | Breaching principles of natural law, rectitude, or justice, and so inconsistent with the demands of virtue, purity, or "good morals"; not right, not moral.… |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Pronunciation | /eɪˈmɒɹ.əl/ /eɪˈmɔɹ.əl/ /eɪˈmɑɹ.əl/ | /ɪˈmɒɹəl/ /ɪˈmɔɹəl/ |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words | 2.9 times per million words |
Sources: amoral and immoral in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of amoral and immoral
amoral
- 1
Done without consideration for morality or immorality
- 2
Not believing in or caring for morality and immorality
immoral
- 1
Breaching principles of natural law, rectitude, or justice, and so inconsistent with the demands of virtue, purity, or "good morals"; not right, not moral. (Compare unethical, illegal.)
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, amoral or immoral?
amoral appears about once in every 2 million words; immoral 2.9 times per million words.
amoral about once in every 2 million wordsimmoral 2.9 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search amoral vs immoral?
“amoral vs immoral” is searched about 2,900 times a month on Google and 230 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“immoral vs amoral”, “amoral or immoral”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.