In the word Daodejing, the “de” part means virtue (or goodness, morality).
This means that anything in the world derives its virtue from the Dao itself.
So the word Dao implies the entire environment in which the world unfolds, while de refers to the particular virtue that any one thing in the world has from that universal Dao.
Dao and de are therefore two parts of a whole; they complement each other. The Dao conditions all things, and de signifies the particular integrity of each thing.