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:
The immediate culprit for these highs is high pressure aloft, which brings a phenomenon meteorologists call “compressional warming.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2026
A book borrowed 150 years ago has finally been returned to an Australian library, with the culprit linked to the Houses of Parliament in London.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 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
Public-health officials that night had notified the chain that the shredded lettuce garnishing Crunchwrap Supremes, Cantina Chicken Burritos and other menu items was the suspected culprit in a rapidly expanding cyclospora outbreak.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
If the trail was still “warm,” as their dad would say, they had a much better chance of catching the culprit.
From "Hopping Mad (The Hardy Boys: Secret Files, #4)" by Franklin W. Dixon
In 2024 then–Surgeon General Vivek Murthy identified one of the main culprits: “A ‘culture of comparison’—often perpetuated online—around milestones, parenting and achievements, ‘has left many families feeling exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind.’
From Slate ● Aug. 11, 2026
The biggest culprits were young Israelis, the report found.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026
“Listing agents are also culprits in this pattern, as they want to work with the celebrity and oblige their unrealistic expectations,” he explains.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 3, 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
Facing the culprits, Bernabe sighed, “Ai, Chihuahua,” and removed a pad from his back pocket.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
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.
