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guilt Definition

guilt (gilt)

noun

  1. the state of having done a wrong or committed an offense; culpability, legal or ethical
  2. a painful feeling of self-reproach resulting from a belief that one has done something wrong or immoral
  3. conduct that involves guilt; crime; sin

Etymology: ME gilt < OE gylt, a sin, offense

guilt Synonyms

guilt

n.

culpability, blame, error, fault, lapse, slip, crime, sin, offense, answerability, liability, misstep, solecism, criminality, blameworthiness, sinfulness, misconduct, dereliction, misbehavior, malpractice, peccability, frailty, delinquency, transgression, dereliction, indiscretion, weakness, failing, malefaction, malfeasance, felonious conduct.

Antonyms innocence*, freedom from fault, blamelessness.

guilt Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • assuage: People often try to assuage the guilt of wrongdoing by doing right.
  • admit: Both admitted guilt fleeting popularity of much bigger position.
  • incur: When we fail to use our God-given gifts and circumstances well, we incur guilt.
  • feel: Does the industry feel guilt about selling harmful products?
  • relieve: I don't want to have his child just to relieve the guilt Trying to connect Three years ago, my mother died suddenly.
  • inherit: Freud thought that all humanity had inherited this guilt from the primal crime, so even now we have mixed feelings about God.

Converse of subject

  • wrack: Wracked by guilt, Billie is now locked into a triangle - a kind of emotional Bermuda triangle of lost souls.
  • haunt: In Act Two, Meier enacted the living nightmare of Sieglinde - she is haunted by guilt and terror - with terrific intensity.
  • consume: He does, but consumed by guilt, he turns himself in to the Egyptian priests.

Adjective modifier

  • middle-class: His working-class angst has been replaced with middle-class guilt.
  • collective: It provides a powerful challenge to the notion of German collective guilt.
  • Catholic: One of the great British films of the 1940s it is brimming over with Catholic guilt.
  • overwhelming: At times his friends experience overwhelming guilt, over-protectiveness toward Matt, and fears of incompetence in the event of seizures.

Modifies a noun

  • trip: We all have a bit of a guilt trip in the " getaway vehicle " .
  • feeling: Either of these controls is more effective than any appeal to guilt feelings.

Noun used with modifier

survivor: It confronts serious issue of AIDS such as safer sex, combination therapies, survivor guilt and returning to work.

Possessives

  • defendant: Those facts certainly do not constitute logical proof of the defendant's guilt, which is the standard Popper sets for inductive inference.
  • survivor: He suffers from nightmares, panic attacks and survivor's guilt.

Preposition: of

sin: How can I be saved from the guilt of sin?

Preposition: by

association: They felt they could be labeled with " guilt by association.