felon
pronunciation
How to pronounce felon in British English:
UK [ˈfelən]
How to pronounce felon in American English:
US [ˈfɛlən]
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- Noun:
- someone who has committed (or been legally convicted of) a crime
- a purulent infection at the end of a finger or toe in the area surrounding the nail
Word Origin
- felon
- felon: [13] Medieval Latin fellō (a word of uncertain origin, sometimes referred to Latin fel ‘gall, poison’) meant ‘evil-doer’. Its nominative form gave English the adjective fell ‘fierce, lethal’, via Old French fel, while its stem form, fellōn-, passed into English through Old French felon. The derivative felony [13] comes from Old French felonie.=> fell
- felon (n.)
- c. 1300, "one who deceives or commits treason; one who is wicked or evil; evil-doer," used of Lucifer and Herod, from Old French felon "evil-doer, scoundrel, traitor, rebel, oath-breaker, the Devil" (9c.), from Medieval Latin fellonem (nominative fello) "evil-doer," which is of uncertain origin, perhaps from Frankish *fillo, *filljo "person who whips or beats, scourger" (source of Old High German fillen "to whip"); or from Latin fel "gall, poison," on the notion of "one full of bitterness." Celtic origins also have been proposed. Another theory (advanced by Professor R. Atkinson of Dublin) traces it to Latin fellare "to suck" (see fecund), which had an obscene secondary meaning in classical Latin (well-known to readers of Martial and Catullus), which would make a felon etymologically a "cock-sucker." OED inclines toward the "gall" explanation, but finds Atkinson's "most plausible" of the others. Also by c. 1300 in English in a general legal sense "criminal; one who has committed a felony," however that was defined. Century Dictionary notes, "the term is not applicable after legal punishment has been completed." In Middle English it also was an adjective, "traitorous, wicked, malignant." Australian official James Mudie (1837), coined felonry "as the appellative of an order or class of persons in New South Wales,--an order which happily exists in no other country in the world."
Example
- 1. Because no one will hire a felon ?
- 2. A felon , or someone who catches them ?
- 3. This mystery gunman wasn 't the only felon who invested time in cpr training .
- 4. I 've never seen a convicted felon file so many appeals .
- 5. A felon in my own family . I could die from embarrassment .