sin

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate.
2. n. Theology Deliberate disobedience to the known will of God.
3. n. Theology A condition of estrangement from God resulting from such disobedience.
4. n. Something regarded as being shameful, deplorable, or utterly wrong.
5. v. To violate a religious or moral law.
6. v. To commit an offense or violation.
7. n. The 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet. See Table at alphabet.
8. abbr. sine.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. 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.
2. n. A serious fault; an error; a transgression: as, a sin against good taste.
3. n. An incarnation or embodiment of sin.
4. n. Synonyms and Wrong, Iniquity, etc. See crime.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. To do or commit, contrary to right or rule: with a cognate object.
8. Also used impersonally, as in the following quotation:
9. To influence, force, or drive by sinning to some course of procedure: followed by an adverbial phrase noting the direction of the result effected.
10. Same as since.
11. An abbreviation of sine, 2.

Wiktionary

1. n. mathematics A symbol of the trigonometric function sine.
2. n. theology A violation of God's will or religious law.
3. n. A misdeed.
4. v. intransitive, theology To commit a sin.
5. n. A letter of the Hebrew alphabet; שׂ
6. n. A letter of the Arabic alphabet; س

GNU Webster's 1913

1. Obs. or Prov. Eng. & Scot. Old form of since.
2. n. 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.
3. n. An offense, in general; a violation of propriety; a misdemeanor.
4. n. A sin offering; a sacrifice for sin.
5. n. rare An embodiment of sin; a very wicked person.
6. v. 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.
7. v. To violate human rights, law, or propriety; to commit an offense; to trespass; to transgress.

WordNet 3.0

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