offense

The legal and moral sense, and the one most often met in print. Latin offensa, "a striking against," pictures wrongdoing as a collision with the law. The noun is usually countable and graded by an adjective: a minor offense, a criminal offense. Edwin Black's Internal Combustion (2006) has Robin Hood dodging fines for "forest offenses," where a noun in front names the body of law that was broken.

Where the insult itself is the act, this is what it leaves behind in the person who receives it. It is usually uncountable and appears in fixed verb pairings: one side gives or causes offense, and the other side feels it. Of the three meanings Latin offensa carried, this one continues "displeasure."

Here the wound is social rather than legal: what is wronged is a person's feelings or dignity, not a statute. The sense lives in phrases like give offense and without offense. Dryden, in 1680, hopes to disagree with two great men without any slight to their memories. The spelling with -se is the American one. British English writes the word with a c, as Dryden did.

A word for people rather than plans: the players on the field when their side has the chance to score, set against the defense trying to stop them. Like team or squad, it names a group as one unit, so it is the offense that struggles or keeps the ball moving. The plays those players run belong to the strategy meaning.

A coach's word: an offense here is a system, something a team installs, runs or builds around a strength such as three-point shooting. It is the counterpart of defense, and the two are regularly paired. It is easy to blur with the players who score. A simple test: if "game plan" or "scheme" could replace it, you are looking at the strategy.