GUILT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Guilt

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noun

Guilt n.

The criminality and consequent exposure to punishment resulting from willful disobedience of law, or from morally wrong action; the state of one who has broken a moral or political law; crime; criminality; offense against right. "Satan had not answer, but stood struck With guilt of his own sin."

Exposure to any legal penalty or forfeiture. "A ship incurs guilt by the violation of a blockade."

A feeling of regret or remorse for having committed some improper act; a recognition of one's own responsibility for doing something wrong. "Depression is often rooted in guilt which has not been dealt with in an appropriate way." "Guilt is a natural and appropriate consequence to a wrong action."

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Etymology of 'Guilt'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Guilt" Quotes from Famous Books

... California. These sections provide that no warrant can be issued by a magistrate until he has examined, on oath, the informant, taken depositions setting forth the facts tending to establish the commission of the offense and the guilt of the accused, and himself been satisfied by these depositions that there is reasonable ground that the person accused has committed the offense. None of these requirements had been met in ...

— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... not be misapprehended, and supposed to recommend good-breeding, thus prophaned and prostituted to the purposes of guilt and perfidy; but I think I may justly infer from it, to what a degree the accomplishment of good-breeding must adorn and enforce virtue and truth, when it can thus soften the outrages and deformity of vice and falsehood. I am sorry ...

— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... Siegfried's "Schwertschmiedung," (Sword-wielding); "Drachenkampf," (Dragon-struggle) and "Brautgewinnung," (Bride-winning) and further investigation of the subject led him in the "Walkuere" to picture Brunhilde's guilt and punishment, and finally in the "Rheingold" a psychological foundation for the whole. The work took this mental shape as early as 1851. Two years later, the poem, for which he had chosen the alliterative style of the Edda as ...

— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... even accompanied him to Alice's room, to sit at the invalid's knee, and chatter with a tact and responsiveness that Alice found an improvement upon her old amusing manner. So free was Norma in these days from any sense of guilt that she felt herself nothing but generous toward Alice, in sparing the older woman some of the excess of joy and companionship in which ...

— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... Casas for being severe and unsparing in his speech. In this respect, of calling the vices and enormities of Slavery by their simple names, and of fastening the guilt of special transactions not vaguely upon human nature, but directly upon the perpetrators who disgraced the nature which they shared, he also anticipated the privilege and ill-repute of American Abolitionists. He told what he saw, or what was guarantied to him by competent witnesses. His cheek ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

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