culpable
Americanadjective
adjective
Usage
What does culpable mean? Culpable means deserving blame for a crime or wrongdoing. When someone is described as culpable for something, it means it’s their fault or that they are guilty of it. Culpable is typically used in serious legal contexts involving crimes. The noun culpability refers to the guilt or blame that is deserved for some crime or wrongdoing. Example: The CEO should be held criminally culpable for the negligence that resulted in the deaths of several employees.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of culpable
1275–1325; Middle English < Latin culpābilis, equivalent to culpā ( re ) to hold liable (derivative of culpa blame) + -bilis -ble; replacing Middle English coupable < Middle French < Latin as above
Explanation
If a child tells his mother he was not to blame for the cookie jar being broken, she could still find him culpable if he was the only one home. Culpable means to be at fault. Culpable is being deserving of blame. If you are culpable of a crime, you are the culprit, or the one who did it. Culpable can be used when looking for the root of the problem rather than a simple who done it. If a teacher leaves the room during a difficult test, and the students decide to cheat, parents might ask whether or not the teacher was also somewhat culpable for the outcome.
Vocabulary lists containing culpable
100 SAT words Beginning with "C"
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Feeling Sorry?
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
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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.
We, the audience, are the final piece of the puzzle, the culpable players who not only ate up the original “To Catch a Predator,” but all the media and memes that spun off it.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026
It has two weeks to establish the causes of the deaths and identify who was responsible and can recommend legal action against anyone found culpable.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026
As in almost every treatment of teen life, whether the fiction is vintage or current, the parents—the root of all evil and/or plot twists—are either absent or culpable.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
He also believed that teenagers who commit crimes are not as culpable as adults.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2026
At Sophie Mol’s funeral and in the days before Estha was Returned, they saw her swollen eyes, and with the self-centeredness of children, held themselves wholly culpable for her grief.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
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.
