culprit
Americannoun
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culprits
plural
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a person or other agent guilty of or responsible for an offense or fault.
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a person arraigned for an offense.
noun
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law a person awaiting trial, esp one who has pleaded not guilty
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the person responsible for a particular offence, misdeed, etc
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of culprit
1670–80; traditionally explained as cul (representing Latin culpābilis guilty) + prit (representing Anglo-French prest ready), marking the prosecution as ready to prove the defendant's guilt. See culpable, presto
Explanation
A culprit is a person who does something wrong, like committing a crime. When your wallet got stolen out of your pocket, there was a culprit to blame in the crowd. The word culprit comes from the Anglo French words cul prit, a contraction of culpable, which means "deserving blame." A culprit isn't always a person; it can be anything that caused something bad to happen — even a sock left on the steps can be a culprit if it makes you slip and fall. Don't confuse culprit with scapegoat, which is a person or thing that gets blamed for something it didn't do.
Vocabulary lists containing culprit
Language Gone Wrong: Words That Started Out as Errors
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The Westing Game
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Vocabulary: A Rapper's Delight!
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Despite social media evidence to the contrary, Painter pleads he is "not always the culprit" when it comes to the pouring of ice buckets.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
But hitting into double plays has been a major culprit behind the Dodgers’ recent offensive struggles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026
He was initially tested for Lyme, and it wasn’t until a monthslong antibody study that the Bourbon virus—so far found in only a handful of cases nationwide—was finally pinpointed as the culprit.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
American Express fell about 4.3% with analysts pointing to slower-than-hoped growth as the culprit.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
“And until today, we thought the culprit of those killings was the Shetani, but...now we know that’s not possible.”
From "Beasts of Prey" by Ayana Gray
The biggest culprits were young Israelis, the report found.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026
There are more obvious culprits for HHS’s failure to protect Americans from this outbreak.
From Slate ● Jul. 22, 2026
Crisps, chocolate bars and ice cream are identified as the culprits of this tendency, which the study viewed as "representing an early form of self-medication".
From Barron's ● May 22, 2026
An influential research paper from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab pointed at infrastructure and much-needed upgrade costs as the possible main culprits behind higher bills, at least for the moment.
From MarketWatch ● May 18, 2026
The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
