Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • abbreviation sine
  • noun A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate.
  • noun Deliberate disobedience to the known will of God.
  • noun A condition of estrangement from God resulting from such disobedience.
  • noun Something regarded as being shameful, deplorable, or utterly wrong.
  • intransitive verb To violate a religious or moral law.
  • idiom (live in sin) To cohabit in a sexual relationship without being married.
  • idiom (as sin) Completely or extremely.
  • noun One of the two forms of the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet, distinguished from the letter shin by having a dot above the left side of the letter.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. (Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism.)
  • noun A serious fault; an error; a transgression: as, a sin against good taste.
  • noun An incarnation or embodiment of sin.
  • noun Synonyms and Wrong, Iniquity, etc. See crime.
  • To commit a sin; depart voluntarily from the path of duty prescribed by God; violate the divine law by actual transgression or by the neglect or non-observance of its injunctions.
  • To commit an error or a fault; be at fault; transgress an accepted standard of propriety or taste; offend; followed by against before an object.
  • To do or commit, contrary to right or rule: with a cognate object.
  • Also used impersonally, as in the following quotation:
  • To influence, force, or drive by sinning to some course of procedure: followed by an adverbial phrase noting the direction of the result effected.
  • Same as since.
  • An abbreviation of sine, 2.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Transgression of the law of God; disobedience of the divine command; any violation of God's will, either in purpose or conduct; moral deficiency in the character; iniquity.
  • noun An offense, in general; a violation of propriety; a misdemeanor.
  • noun A sin offering; a sacrifice for sin.
  • noun rare An embodiment of sin; a very wicked person.
  • noun See under Actual, Canonical, etc.
  • noun (R. C. Ch.) willful and deliberate transgressions, which take away divine grace; -- in distinction from vental sins. The seven deadly sins are pride, covetousness, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth.
  • noun a man who (according to a former practice in England) for a small gratuity ate a piece of bread laid on the chest of a dead person, whereby he was supposed to have taken the sins of the dead person upon himself.
  • noun a sacrifice for sin; something offered as an expiation for sin.
  • Obs. or Prov. Eng. & Scot. Old form of since.
  • intransitive verb To depart voluntarily from the path of duty prescribed by God to man; to violate the divine law in any particular, by actual transgression or by the neglect or nonobservance of its injunctions; to violate any known rule of duty; -- often followed by against.
  • intransitive verb To violate human rights, law, or propriety; to commit an offense; to trespass; to transgress.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun mathematics A symbol of the trigonometric function sine.
  • noun A letter of the Hebrew alphabet; שׂ
  • noun A letter of the Arabic alphabet; س
  • noun theology A violation of God's will or religious law.
  • noun A misdeed.
  • verb intransitive, theology To commit a sin.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb commit a sin; violate a law of God or a moral law
  • noun estrangement from god
  • noun an act that is regarded by theologians as a transgression of God's will
  • verb commit a faux pas or a fault or make a serious mistake
  • noun (Akkadian) god of the Moon; counterpart of Sumerian Nanna
  • noun the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet
  • noun ratio of the length of the side opposite the given angle to the length of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle
  • noun violent and excited activity

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English sinne, from Old English synn; see es- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Hebrew śîn, modeled on šîn, shin (the following letter).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Modification of shin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English sinne, synne, sunne, zen, from Old English sinn, senn, synn ("injury, mischief, enmity, feud; sin, guilt, crime"), from Proto-Germanic *sundiz, *sundijō (“sin”), from Proto-Indo-European *sent-, *sont- ("being, true", implying a verdict of "truly guilty" against an accusation or charge), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- (“to be”); compare Old English sōþ ("true, very, sooth"; see sooth).

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Examples

  • _Oh! this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold -- Yet now, if than wilt forgive their sin_

    Sermons on Various Important Subjects Andrew Lee

  • I know all about Nancy, and her first husband and how he left her, and she thought he was dead, and married a good man, and when that worthless devil came back she thought she was living in sin with that good man -- in _sin_!

    The Leatherwood God William Dean Howells 1878

  • The common idea, then, is, that the justice of God consists in punishing sin: it is in the hope of giving a larger idea of the justice of God in punishing sin that I ask, '_Why is God bound to punish sin_?'

    Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and II. George MacDonald 1864

  • 'Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of _sin_;' the revised version gives, 'Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of

    Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and II. George MacDonald 1864

  • And sin is _sin_ -- it is rebellion against the King of Heaven.

    The White Lady of Hazelwood A Tale of the Fourteenth Century Emily Sarah Holt 1864

  • Nobbs did not know at that time, though he learned it afterwards, that safety from the drink-sin -- as from all other sin -- lies not in strong-man resolutions, or Temperance pledges, though both are useful aids, but in Jesus, the Saviour _from sin_.

    The Island Queen 1859

  • Lastly, and above all, set under the feet of the statue of Christ Himself, are the lion and dragon; the images of Carnal sin, or _Human sin_, as distinguished from the Spiritual and Intellectual sin of Pride, by which the angels also fell.

    Our Fathers Have Told Us Part I. The Bible of Amiens John Ruskin 1859

  • The sin of thoughtlessness shall be beaten with fewer stripes than the sin of deliberation, -- but it shall be _beaten_, and therefore it is _sin_.

    Sermons to the Natural Man 1857

  • In the second place, we see from the subject, that _thoughtlessness in sin will never excuse sin_.

    Sermons to the Natural Man 1857

  • It is not true that men love and commit sin _as sin_.

    A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory Albert Taylor Bledsoe 1843

Comments

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  • If you believe that by being human you have sinned, you should take it upon yourself to accept every person’s calls from telemarketers.

    --Jan Cox

    June 17, 2007

  • Singapore Changi Airport.

    October 22, 2008