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:
While he had suspicions, he could never identify the culprit.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026
But the bigger culprit is that investors only have eyes for big AI IPOs like Anthropic.
From Barron's ● Sep. 29, 2026
This time, the main culprit is a war with no clear end in sight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
Can the culprit actually be some big freaky monster?
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
Many a Muggle child has been accused of vandalism when an offended Knarl was the real culprit.
From "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" by J.K. Rowling
Officials haven’t identified any culprits and said they were seeking international cooperation in the probe.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
Among the culprits: owners letting their land, the youths delivering the fuel to run the mining machinery, but also "certain officials" in both Ivory Coast and abroad financing illegal mines to reap the profits.
From Barron's ● Sep. 30, 2026
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
MSF says it has sacked 18 culprits but tells the AP news agency it was unable to identify some of the other alleged perpetrators.
From BBC ● Jun. 15, 2026
She sits down, obviously pleased that the culprits have been caught.
From "Monster" by Walter Dean Myers
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
