offender
Americannoun
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offenders
plural
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someone who has violated a criminal, religious, or moral law.
The program aids individuals already in the criminal justice system and is geared toward nonviolent offenders.
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a person or thing that irritates, annoys, or angers.
Some of us tried to take matters into our own hands by confronting the noise pollution offenders, but they were entirely unwilling to quiet down.
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something that is disagreeable.
If you’re curious about the odor, I’m afraid you’ll find that the offender is a catbox that has not been emptied recently.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of offender
Explanation
An offender is a criminal, someone who breaks the law. A first-time offender, depending on the crime, might only have to pay a fine or perform community service. Offender is the way prison inmates and lawbreakers are often referred to in news reports or by police officers and prison staff. You might hear terms like "drug offenders," people arrested for crimes involving illegal drugs, or "juvenile offenders," young people who have broken the law. Offender comes from the verb offend, "to sin against" in the fourteenth century, from the Latin offendere, "to hit or strike against."
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 being the worst offender, thanks for evolving.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026
Kozlowski's wife, Sandra Kozlowska, 38, also from Kirkby, was convicted of assisting an offender after she helped her husband to avoid suspicion by depositing money in bank accounts for him and lying to the police.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
There are currently 100 artists participating from 37 prisons and young offender institutions across England and Wales and more than 1,500 pieces of art were waiting to be uploaded and sold online.
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026
That’s like staying in the dugout during a bench-clearing brawl then offering the offender a handshake.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
This week his job was escorting a violent juvenile offender first from Minneapolis to Seattle, then to Ketchikan, Alaska, where they boarded a big silver floatplane to the Tlingit village of Drake.
From "Touching Spirit Bear" by Ben Mikaelsen
The time police must wait before being able to destroy a seized vehicle has been reduced from 14 to seven days, making it harder for offenders to reclaim and reuse them.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
The new rule will still keep firearms out of the hands of undocumented immigrants, registered sex offenders and violent criminals, the department said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
And those consequences tend to be mild: Several incidents in the Washington Post piece resulted in probation for offenders who used Flock inappropriately.
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2026
Dismissal of the charges follows 51-year-old Vem Miller’s completion of a county program that allows first-time, low-level offenders to have their criminal charges dropped and arrest records sealed after completing a set of requirements.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
The notion that juvenile offenders are fundamentally different from adult ones lasted for more than eighty years.
From "The 57 Bus" by Dashka Slater
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.
