sin

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Whatever God defines as a sin is a sin, if you're religious.

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Definitions (38)

American Heritage Dictionary (8)

noun A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate.
noun Theology Deliberate disobedience to the known will of God.
noun Theology A condition of estrangement from God resulting from such disobedience.

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Century Dictionary (19)

Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. (Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism.) The true definition of sin is a much contested question, theologians being broadly divided into two schools of thought, the one holding that all sin consists in the voluntary and conscious act of the individual, the other that it also includes the moral character and disposition of the race; one that all moral responsibility is individual, the other that there is also a moral responsibility of the race as a race. To these should be added a third school, which regards sin as simply an imperfection and immaturity, and therefore requiring for remedy principally a healthful development under favorable conditions. Theologians also divide sin into two classes, actual sin and original sin. Actual sin consists in the voluntary conscious act of the individual. (See actual.) Original sin is the innate depravity and corruption of the nature common to all mankind. But whether this native depravity is properly called sin, or whether it is only a tendency to sin and becomes sin only when it is yielded to by the conscious voluntary act of the individual, is a question upon which theologians differ. Roman Catholic and other theologians, following the early church fathers, distinguish between mortal (or deadly) and venial sins. Mortal or deadly sins are such as wilfully violate the divine law, destroy the friendship of God, and cause the death of the soul. The seven mortal or deadly sins are pride, covetousness. lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. Venial sins are such transgressions as are due to inadvertence, do not destroy the friendship of God, and, while tending to become mortal, are not in themselves the death of the soul. The difference is one of degree, not of kind. And ye knowe also that it was do be me, and so sholde myn be the synne. Merlin (E. E. T. S.), i. 80. Sure, it is no sin; Or of the deadly seven it is the least. Shak., M. for M., iii. 1. 111. At the court of assistants one Hugh Bewett was banished for holding publicly and maintaining that he was free from original sin and from actual also for half a year before. Winthrop, Hist. New England, II. 22. Original sin is the product of human will as yet unindividualized in Adam, while actual sin is the product of human will as individualized in his posterity. Shedd, Hist. Christian Doctrine, II. 81.
A serious fault; an error; a transgression: as, a sin against good taste.
An incarnation or embodiment of sin. Thy ambition, Thou scarlet sin, robb'd this bewailing land Of noble Buckingham. Shak., Hen. VIII., iii. 2. 255.

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Examples (50)

Whatever God defines as a sin is a sin, if you're religious. — Yahoo! Answers: Latest Questions
Saying that God loves the sinner but hates the sin is a little like saying that a heat-seeking missile doesn't care about the pilot but hates the afterburners. — GetReligion
In the biblical proscription that man "should not lie with man as with a woman," he said, "the sin is a man would allow himself to be treated like a woman." — Southern Voice Local
Spurgeon helpfully makes the point of how dangerous this sin is and how we should respond accordingly. — Oversight of Souls
A sin is a sin is a sin … no one sin is greater than any other. — Bossip.com

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crime · vice · evil · passion · misery · weakness · error · guilt · act · danger · love · cruelty

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (5)

American Heritage Dictionary (2)

Middle English sinne, from Old English synn; see es- in Indo-European roots.
Hebrew śîn, modeled on šîn, shin (the following letter).

Century Dictionary (3)

from Middle English sinne, synne, sunne, senne, zenne, from Anglo-Saxon syn, synn (in inflection synn-, sinn-, senn-) =Old Saxon sundea, sundia =OFries. sinne, sende =Middle Dutch sunde, sonde. D. zonde =Middle Low German sunde, Low German sunne, sunn =Old High German suntea, sunta, sundea, sunda, Middle High German sunde, sünde, German sünde, =Icelandic syndh, synth, later synd, =Swedish Danish synd (not in Gothic (Moesogothic)), sin, akin to L. son (t-)s, sinful, guilty, sonticus, dangerous, hurtful, and perhaps to Greek ᾰτη, sin, mischief, harm. According to Curtius and others, the word is an abstract noun formed from the present participle represented by L. *sen (t-)s, en (t-)s, being, and by Anglo-Saxon sōth, true, sooth, =Icelandic sannr, etc., literally ‘being (so)’ (see sooth), Goth, sunja, the truth, sooth.
from Middle English sinnen, synnen, sinien, sinnien, sinʒen, singen, sunʒen, sungen, sineʒen, from Anglo-Saxon syngian, gesyngian =Old Saxon sundiōn, sundeōn =Middle Dutch sondighen, Dutch zondigen =Old High German sunteōn, suntōn, sundōn, Middle High German sundigen, sunden, sündigen, sünden, German sündigen =Icelandic syndga =Swedish synda =Danish synde, sin; from the noun.
from Middle English sin, syn, sen, a contraction of sithen: see sithen, sith, and cf. sine, syne, since.

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