Definitions, definitions, definitions: the deeper you go, the more confused you feel, and yet, an answer is found?

When I was studying for the midterm, I decided to go into farther detail of the true definitions of the words given to us, but upon appraisal of the words I found myself digging deeper and deeper, into a giant hole of confusion. This "hole of confusion" came upon me when I got to the words 'applied ethics'. Now, we (the students within one of the 120 lectures) were given examples of what applied ethics was, but I was still confused on what the words actually meant. So, today, I pulled out my Oxford English dictionary, and looked up the word 'applied' and the word 'ethics'.

When I looked up the word 'applied' I got "(of a subject) practical rather than theoretical". Then I started thinking, what is practical, and what is theoretical? So, I looked them both up, and I realized that 'practical' is something that is "concerned with practice" and "feasible", where 'theoretical' is something "concerned with or involving theory rather than its practical application"; theory being "a supposition or a system of ideas". So, when I looked back at the word 'applied' I realized that it is (of a subject) more likely to happen rather then just an idea.

Then, when I looked up the word 'ethics' I got "the moral principles governing or influencing conduct" and "the branch of knowledge concerned with moral principles". Now, both of these definitions used the words 'moral principles', I already knew that 'principles' were things that you lived by and the basis of something, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure what the exact definition of moral was, so I then looked that up. The definition of moral was "standards of behaviour, or principles of right and wrong", which caught me a little off guard. I was then thinking, is to be moral, to go a long with society?

Then, I caught myself thinking, well, what is right and what is wrong? I felt a little stupid to be wanting to look up the definitions of 'right' and 'wrong', because these are things that we learn at a very early age. Although, if we think about it, we never really learn the exact meanings of the words, just the actions, and don't we learn these actions from other people and what they think is right and wrong? So, in retrospect, aren't we just going along with society?

So if I were to redefine 'moral', it would be to go along with what society believes to be right or wrong, and to redefine 'ethics', it would be the foundation of what society believes to be right and wrong, that governs or influences us.

Now if I was to go back to the original words I was trying to define which is 'applied ethics' my definition would now be 'something that can happen that concerns society's idea of what is right and wrong that govern's and influences us'. Now, this definition makes sense when applied to the examples given within the lecture, but it still leaves me in a hole of confusion. Is this really what 'applied ethics' is?