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:
But the bigger culprit is that investors only have eyes for big AI IPOs like Anthropic.
From Barron's ● Sep. 29, 2026
One culprit may be a slowing labor market in manufacturing last year, alongside continued strong job and wage growth in services that employ relatively more women.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026
He loved crime stories in which the culprit was the slippery masses.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
Still, I cannot help but wonder whether a whole-body MRI or one of the newer multi-cancer blood tests might reveal a hidden culprit.
From Slate ● Sep. 9, 2026
She still suspected that he might have been the culprit who released the squirrel at the holiday ball, in order to provoke the children into wolfish fits.
From "The Hidden Gallery" by Maryrose Wood
"This is very restrictive injunctive relief that's going to require them to change a lot of the policies that we had identified as the culprits in what we call the war on childhood," Robertson said.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2026
There are more obvious culprits for HHS’s failure to protect Americans from this outbreak.
From Slate ● Jul. 22, 2026
Bottled water and processed food are big culprits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 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
I watched as he was taken to the hospital and watched as the culprits were arrested.
From "The Freedom Writers Diary" by The Freedom Writers
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.
