culprit
pronunciation
How to pronounce culprit in British English:
UK [ˈkʌlprɪt]
How to pronounce culprit in American English:
US [ˈkʌlprɪt]
-
- Noun:
- someone who perpetrates wrongdoing
Word Origin
- culprit
- culprit: [17] Culprit appears to be a fossilized survival of the mixture of English and French once used in English courts. The usually accepted account of its origin is that it is a lexicalization of an exchange in court between the accused and the prosecutor. If the prisoner pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge read out against him, the prosecutor would have countered, in Law French, with ‘Culpable: prit d’averrer …’, literally ‘Guilty: ready to prove’. (English culpable [14] comes ultimately from Latin culpa ‘guilt’, and prit is the Anglo- Norman form of what in modern French has become prêt ‘ready’, from Latin praestus – source of English presto).The theory is that this would have been noted down by those recording the proceedings in abbreviated form as cul. prit, which eventually came to be apprehended as a term used for addressing the accused.=> culpable, presto
- culprit (n.)
- 1670s, from Anglo-French cul prit, contraction of Culpable: prest (d'averrer nostre bille) "guilty, ready (to prove our case)," words used by prosecutor in opening a trial. It seems the abbreviation cul. prit was mistaken in English for an address to the defendant.
Example
- 1. The crudest attacks come with the culprit 's electronic fingerprints .
- 2. But they seem a highly unlikely culprit .
- 3. In the past few years , a new potential culprit has emerged : gut bacteria .
- 4. It 's a race against time to capture the culprit before he or she strikes again .
- 5. That is presumably tonic to the real culprit for the hunger , the chubby dear leader , kim jong il .