culpa

See also: culpá and culpă

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin culpa.

Noun

culpa (plural culpae)

1. (law) Negligence or fault, as distinguishable from dolus (deceit, fraud), which implies intent, culpa being imputable to defect of intellect, dolus to defect of heart.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Wharton to this entry?)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for culpa in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Anagrams

• capul

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Aragonese

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin culpa.

Noun

culpa f (plural culpas)

1. blame, fault

Further reading

• Bal Palazios, Santiago (2002) , “culpa”, in Dizionario breu de a luenga aragonesa, Zaragoza, →ISBN

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Catalan

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin culpa.

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central) IPA^(key): /ˈkul.pə/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /ˈkul.pa/

Noun

culpa f (plural culpes)

1. fault, blame
2. guilt

Derived terms

• per culpa de

Related terms

• culpable
• culpar

Further reading

• “culpa” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

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Latin

Etymology 1

From Proto-Italic *kʷolpā (“wrong, mistake”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷolp-eh₂ (“bend, turn”), from *kʷelp-.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈkul.pa/, [ˈkʊɫ̪.pa]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈkul.pa/

• Audio (Classical)

  (file)

Noun

culpa f (genitive culpae); first declension

1. fault, defect
2. blame, guilt
3. crime

Declension

First-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	culpa	culpae
Genitive	culpae	culpārum
Dative	culpae	culpīs
Accusative	culpam	culpās
Ablative	culpā	culpīs
Vocative	culpa	culpae

Derived terms

• culpō
• meā culpā

Descendants

• French: coulpe
• Italian: colpa
• Old Portuguese: culpa
  • Portuguese: culpa
• Romanian: culpă
• Sicilian: curpa
• Spanish: culpa

Further reading

• culpa in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• culpa in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• culpa in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• culpa in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• Carl Meissner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • a guilty conscience: conscientia mala or peccatorum, culpae, sceleris, delicti
    
  • to be conscious of no ill deed: nullius culpae sibi conscium esse
    
  • to be free from blame: extra culpam esse
    
  • to be almost culpable: affinem esse culpae
    
  • to put the blame on another: culpam in aliquem conferre, transferre, conicere
    
  • to attribute the fault to some one: culpam alicui attribuere, assignare
    
  • to commit some blameworthy action: culpam committere, contrahere
    
  • to commit some blameworthy action: facinus, culpam in se admittere
    
  • to bear the blame of a thing: culpam alicuius rei sustinere
    
  • to exonerate oneself from blame: culpam a se amovere
    
  • (ambiguous) to be at fault; to blame; culpable: in culpa esse
    
  • (ambiguous) some one is to blame in a matter; it is some one's fault: culpa alicuius rei est in aliquo
    
  • (ambiguous) it is my fault: mea culpa est
    
  • (ambiguous) to be free from blame: culpa carere, vacare
    
  • (ambiguous) to be free from blame: abesse a culpa
    
  • (ambiguous) to be almost culpable: prope abesse a culpa
    
• culpa in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• culpa in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the main entry.

Verb

culpā

1. second-person singular present active imperative of culpō

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Portuguese

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin culpa.

Pronunciation

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /ˈkuɫ.pɐ/
• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈkuw.pɐ/
• Hyphenation: cul‧pa

Noun

culpa f (plural culpas)

1. fault

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:culpa.

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Spanish

Etymology 1

Learned borrowing from Latin culpa; cf. the inherited Old Spanish colpa.

Noun

culpa f (plural culpas)

1. fault
2. guilt
3. blame

Derived terms

• culposo, culposa
• echar la culpa
• libre de culpa (“off the hook, blameless”)

Related terms

• culpar
• culpable
• culpabilidad

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the main entry.

Verb

culpa

1. Informal second-person singular (tú) affirmative imperative form of culpar.
2. Formal second-person singular (usted) present indicative form of culpar.
3. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted^?) present indicative form of culpar.