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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

guilt.

Responsibility for wrongdoing.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɡɪlt/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. Responsibility for wrongdoing.

    uncountable · usually
  2. The state of having been found guilty or admitted guilt in legal proceedings.

    uncountable · usually
  3. Regret for having done wrong.

    uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-West Germanic *gulti? Old English gylt Middle English gilt English guilt From Middle English gilt, gult, from Old English gylt (“guilt, sin, offense, crime, fault”), of obscure origin. Possibly related with Old English ġieldan (“to pay, requite, punish”) (whence yield), from Proto-West Germanic *guldijā (whence Middle High German gülte (“debt, fee, financial duty”), Middle Low German gülde, German Gülte), from Proto-West Germanic *geldan (“to pay for”), from Proto-Germanic *geldaną (“to pay”). However, neither the Old English stem form nor its ending -t (instead of -d) fit the continental form.

verb/ɡɪlt/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. To commit offenses; act criminally.

    intransitive · obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English gilten, gylten, from Old English gyltan (“to commit sin, be guilty”), from gylt (“guilt, sin, offense, crime, fault”).

verb/ɡɪlt/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. To cause someone to feel guilt, particularly in order to influence their behaviour.

    informal · transitive
    He didn't want to do it, but his wife guilted him into it.
Where this word comes from

From Etymology 1.

adj/ɡɪlt/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. Obsolete form of gilt (“gilded”)

    alt-of · not-comparable · obsolete
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.