DictionaryAI

crime

KRYM/kɹaɪm/

Pluralcrimes

6 meanings of crime

Practice

  1. 1
    one illegal actnouncountable
    An act that breaks the law, especially one punishable under criminal law.

    Burglary is a crime that carries significant penalties.

    Investigators gathered evidence at the scene of the crime.

    UsageThe usual verb is commit: people commit a crime, and the police try to solve it.

    Similaroffense, violation

  2. 2
    noununcountable
    Illegal activity in general, including the practice of breaking the law as a way of life.

    Violent crime rose sharply during the economic downturn.

    Many of these policies aim to reduce crime through better education.

    UsageNo a and no plural here: fight crime, violent crime, organized crime. Single acts are crimes.

  3. 3
    moral wrongnouncountable
    A great sin or act of wickedness, regardless of whether any law forbids it.

    Cruelty to the helpless was, in his eyes, the greatest crime of all.

    To betray a friend's trust is a crime against common decency.

    UsageOften an exaggeration: it's a crime to waste it, it should be a crime; also a crime against decency.

    Similarsin, outrage, atrocity, wrong, abomination

    Note

    Here the law drops out and only the wrong remains. Pope can write "No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love," where no statute is in question, only guilt. Unlike the legal meaning, nothing here needs a court.

Less common meanings

  1. 4
    verbrareintransitive
    To commit crime or take part in criminal activity.
    If, during the 1920s, the master criminal was a gamester, criming for self expression, during the 1930s he performed in other ways for other purposes.
    1987, Robert Sampson, Yesterday's Faces: From the Dark Side
  2. 5
    nounobsoletecountable
    Something that brings about or gives rise to wrongdoing.
    the tree of life, the crime of our first father's fall
    1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
    Note

    An obsolete reversal, in which the word once named the cause of wrongdoing rather than the wrong itself. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590) speaks of "the crime of our first father's fall," meaning what occasioned that fall. Modern ears will hear an act in it, so treat this as a sense to recognize in older verse, not one to use.

    Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 5 facts

    • Crime has an obsolete sense meaning something that occasions wrongdoing. en.wiktionary.org
    • Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene. en.wikipedia.org
    • The Faerie Queene's first three books, including the quoted passage, were first published in 1590. gutenberg.org
    • The quotation occurs in The Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto XI, stanza 46; the item's apostrophe modernizes the original spelling. gutenberg.org
    • The interpretation of crime as the cause or occasion of the fall is supported by Wauchope's glossary. gutenberg.org
  3. 6
    verbUK
    To charge a member of the armed forces with an offense against military discipline.

Practice

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Origin

Latin "crīmen" passed into Old French as "crime" and into Middle English as "cryme" or "crime," taking the place of the native Old English word "firen."