VICE, n. [L. vitium.]

1. Properly, a spot or defect; a fault; a blemish; as, the vices of a political constitution. – Madison.
2. In ethics, any voluntary action or course of conduct which deviates from the rules of moral rectitude, or from the plain rules of propriety; any moral unfitness of conduct, either from defect of duty, or from the transgression of known principles of rectitude. Vice differs from crime, in being less enormous. We never call murder or robbery a vice; but every act of intemperance, all falsehood, duplicity, deception, lewdness and the like, is a vice. The excessive indulgence of passions and appetites which in themselves are innocent, is a vice. The smoking of tobacco and the taking of snuff, may in certain cases be innocent and even useful, but these practices may be carried to such an excess as to become vices. This word is also used to denote a habit of transgressing; as, a life of vice. Vice is rarely a solitary invader; it usually brings with it a frightful train of followers.
3. Depravity or corruption of manners; as, an age of vice. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, / The post of honor is a private station. – Addison.
4. A fault or bad trick in a horse.
5. The fool or punchinello of old shows. His face made of brass, like a vice in a game. – Tusser.
6. An iron press. [This should be written vise.]
7. A gripe or grasp. [Not in use.] – Shak.

L. vice, in the turn or place, is used in composition to denote one qui vicem gerit, who acts in the place of another, or is second in authority.

To draw by a kind of violence. [Not in use. See Vise.] – Shak.

1. A defect; a fault; an error; a blemish; an imperfection; as, the vices of a political constitution; the vices of a horse.
   
   

   Withouten vice of syllable or letter. Chaucer.

   Mark the vice of the procedure. Sir W. Hamilton.

2. A kind of instrument for holding work, as in filing. Same as Vise.
3. To hold or squeeze with a vice, or as if with a vice.
   
   
   Shak.

   The coachman's hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh. De Quincey.

4. In the place of] in the stead; as, A. B. was appointed postmaster vice C. D. resigned.
5. Denoting one who in certain cases may assume the office or duties of a superior; designating an officer or an office that is second in rank or authority; as, vice president; vice agent; vice consul, etc.
   
   

   Vice admiral. [Cf. F. vice-amiral.] (a) An officer holding rank next below an admiral. By the existing laws, the rank of admiral and vice admiral in the United States Navy will cease at the death of the present incumbents. (b) A civil officer, in Great Britain, appointed by the lords commissioners of the admiralty for exercising admiralty jurisdiction within their respective districts. -- Vice admiralty, the office of a vice admiral. -- Vice-admiralty court, a court with admiralty jurisdiction, established by authority of Parliament in British possessions beyond the seas. Abbott. -- Vice chamberlain, an officer in court next in rank to the lord chamberlain. [Eng.] - - Vice chancellor. (a) (Law) An officer next in rank to a chancellor. (b) An officer in a university, chosen to perform certain duties, as the conferring of degrees, in the absence of the chancellor. (c) (R. C. Ch.) The cardinal at the head of the Roman Chancery. -- Vice consul [cf. F. vice- consul], a subordinate officer, authorized to exercise consular functions in some particular part of a district controlled by a consul. -- Vice king, one who acts in the place of a king; a viceroy. -- Vice legate [cf. F. vice-légat], a legate second in rank to, or acting in place of, another legate. -- Vice presidency, the office of vice president. -- Vice president [cf. F. vice-président], an officer next in rank below a president.

6. 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.

7. A tool for drawing lead into cames, or flat grooved rods, for casements.
   
   
   [Written also vise.]
8. 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.
   
   

   * 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.

9. A gripe or grasp.
   
   
   [Obs.] Shak.