Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Sinning; offending; guilty; causing offense.
- Morbid; bad; corrupt; not healthy.
- Imperfect; erroneous; incorrect: as, a, peccant citation.
- n. An offender.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Sinning; guilty of transgression; criminal.
- adj. Morbid; corrupt.
- adj. rare Wrong; defective; faulty.
- n. obsolete An offender.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. liable to sin
Etymologies
- Latin peccāns, peccantis (Wiktionary)
- Latin peccāns, peccant-, present participle of peccāre, to sin; see ped- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The peccant cat follows me into the kitchen meowing constantly.”
“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.”
“The tattle of society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife.”
“My worry is that Obama, who appeals to the best of our nature, and to the transformative power of government, lives in a fantasy world, disconnected from the peccant realities of what it takes to get things done in Washington.”
“In photographing and videotaping Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen while they walked the streets of Paris, notoriously peccant paparazzi agency X17 may have broken French and international law.”
The French Remember Princess Diana & Try To Save MK Olsen | Best Week Ever
“Gavendum hic diligenter a, multum, calefacientibus, atque exsiccantibus, sive alimenta fuerint haec, sive medicamenta: nonnulli enim ut ventositates et rugitus conpescant, hujusmodi utentes medicamentis, plurimum peccant, morbum sit augentes: debent enim medicamenta declinare ad calidum vel frigidum secundum exigentiam circumstantiarum, vel ut patiens inclinat ad cal. et frigid.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘peccant’.
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A Glossary of Filth
A compilation of those nitty-gritty yucky terms for substances and situations that we prefer not to encounter. Please folks, keep it clean; avoid the overly offensive ones.
"the terms...schmutz, smegma, muck, snarge, sewerage, mecomium, sewage, sebum, toe jam, pus, sludge, backwash and 130 more...
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Dirty Deeds, Acts & Villainous Arcana
Villains, evildoers, and the wonderful words to describe them.
putsch, internecine, galère, stygian, infernal, opprobrium, anathema, bruit, scurrility, mulct, misanthropic, invective and 102 more...
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Collected Words - List 2
I've been saving these words FOR YEARS. Now, I've found Wordie
gasconade, zaccheus, spoor, precentor, bombazine, otiose, khamsin, bruited, viva voce, whilom, lenitive, ebullition and 244 more...
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crime scene propers
because I love watching criminal minds, csi, and cold case..
proclivity, asphyxiation, vicinity, agent, victim, peccant, schlimazel, bouleversement, reciprocity, lividity, evidence, perpetrator and 2 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Serendipity's Words
defenestration, mercurial, syzygy, wicked, iniquitous, metastable, demimonde, entropic, ephemeral, irreligious, frisbee, manifold and 474 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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What David Foster Wallace circled in ...
ablative, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, ailanthus, aleatory, alfresco, algolagnia and 474 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
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What David Foster Wallace Circled in ...
http://www.slate.com/id/2250784/
ablative absolute, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, aleatory, ailanthus, alfresco, algolagnia and 482 more...
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Sinful or Guilty
Nouns meaning sinful or guilty
peccant, culpable, piacular, piaculous, peccaminous, piaculary, transgredient, transgressing
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Wordie/Wordnik Curio Cabinet
Oddments culled from my "main" lists that belong in a display cabinet of their own, plus sundry other curiosities. :-)
zeugma, ziggurat, xiphoid, xeric, whizgigging, whangdoodle, viviparous, vivific, vinolent, verjuice, vellicate, velleity and 1193 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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Vocabulary of Lord Rahl
Master Rahl guide us.
Master Rahl teach us.
Master Rahl protect us.
In your light we thrive.
In your mercy we are sheltered.
In your wisdom we are humbled.
internecine, antipodal, poliorcetics, haruspex, hejira, conventicle, ultroneous, Myrmidon, epic, fantasy, empire, victory and 121 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for peccant.

chained_bear "'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 Mar 9, 2008
colleen Gosh, fbharjo, I just was not putting mendicant together with mendacious -- I was thinking of the wandering ascetic definition of it, mendicant monk, like. Sep 24, 2007
fbharjo 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??? Sep 23, 2007
colleen 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. Sep 21, 2007
fbharjo as in mendicant??? Sep 21, 2007