Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Sinful; guilty.
- adjective Violating a rule or an accepted practice; erring.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Sinning; offending; guilty; causing offense.
- Morbid; bad; corrupt; not healthy.
- Imperfect; erroneous; incorrect: as, a, peccant citation.
- noun An offender.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete An offender.
- adjective Sinning; guilty of transgression; criminal.
- adjective Morbid; corrupt.
- adjective rare Wrong; defective; faulty.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective obsolete
unhealthy ; causingdisease - adjective
sinful - noun obsolete An offender.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective liable to sin
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Nothing is safe from this porcelain peccant pilferer, this corrupt criminal crockery, for the moment you turn your back, this amazing Ash Tray will abscond with all your electronic posessions and sell them on ebay.
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Yesterday, he by severe cross-examination extracted from Lord MORLEY admission of personal knowledge of what are known as the peccant paragraphs in document handed on behalf of War Office to General GOUGH.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 Various
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If a person has an abscess, the medical man will say that it contains "peccant" matter, and people say that they have a "bad" arm or finger, or that they are very "bad" all over, when they only mean "diseased."
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If a person has an abscess, the medical man will say that it contains "peccant" matter, and people say that they have a "bad" arm or finger, or that they are very "bad" all over, when they only mean "diseased."
Erewhon Samuel Butler 1868
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The Timesobit is written strongly enough in the Safire style--in one case he's described as "a Pickwickian quibbler who gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and perversely peccant puns"--that it makes you wonder if he drafted it himself.
Shelfari: Omnivoracious 2009
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The Timesobit is written strongly enough in the Safire style--in one case he's described as "a Pickwickian quibbler who gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and perversely peccant puns"--that it makes you wonder if he drafted it himself.
William Safire, 1929-2009 Omnivoracious 2009
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It also tapped into the lighter side of the dour-looking Mr. Safire: a Pickwickian quibbler who gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and perversely peccant puns, like "the president's populism" and "the first lady's momulism."
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The peccant cat follows me into the kitchen meowing constantly.
2009 April 2009
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The peccant cat follows me into the kitchen meowing constantly.
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The tattle of society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife.
fbharjo commented on the word peccant
as in mendicant???
September 21, 2007
colleen commented on the word peccant
not even a little! from the OED:
1. a. Unhealthy, corrupt, diseased; causing disease. Formerly esp. of a bodily humour. Now arch. and hist.
2. a. Of a person or other agent: that commits or has committed a sin or an offence; sinning, offending; culpable.
b. Of an action or thing: offensive; sinful.
September 21, 2007
fbharjo commented on the word peccant
mendicant's etymology is fascinating and amazingly parallel to peccant---
1616, from M.Fr. mendacieux, from L. mendacium "a lie," from mendax (gen. mendacis) "lying, deceitful," related to menda "fault, defect, carelessness in writing" (cf. amend, mendicant), from PIE base *mend- "physical defect, fault." The sense evolution of mendax influenced by mentiri "to speak falsely, lie, deceive." Mendacity is attested from 1646.
A mendicant is finding a blemish in whom - himself or in the potential giver???
September 23, 2007
colleen commented on the word peccant
Gosh, fbharjo, I just was not putting mendicant together with mendacious -- I was thinking of the wandering ascetic definition of it, mendicant monk, like.
September 24, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word peccant
"'As I thought, it is your liver that is the peccant part; or at least the most peccant of your parts.'"
--O'Brian, The Truelove, 15
March 9, 2008
rolig commented on the word peccant
In Canto XV of Don Juan, Byron lists all the foods served at a sumptuous dinner. At one point, he breaks off to say of his Muse:
But though a 'bonne vivante,' I must confess
Her stomach 's not her peccant part; this tale
However doth require some slight refection,
Just to relieve her spirits from dejection.
Presumably, in Byron's case, the "peccant part" of his Muse was located a few inches lower than the stomach.
June 8, 2013