Definitions

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

  • noun A wrongful act under law, such as a tort or a criminal offense.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A transgression; an offense; specifically, in civil and Scots law, a misdemeanor.

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

  • noun (Law) An offense or transgression against law; (Scots Law) an offense of a lesser degree; a misdemeanor.

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

  • noun law The branch of law dealing in delicts.

Etymologies

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

[Latin dēlictum, from neuter past participle of dēlinquere, to offend; see delinquent.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin delictum ("fault"), from neuter of delictus, past participle of delinquo ("to be lacking", "to fail", "to transgress")

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Examples

  • As a dismayed liberal Catholic advocate put it when the church decreed that merely attempting to ordain women is a "more grave delict," just like pedophilia: "It tells us that the church still understands itself as an environment dominated by men."

    Philip N. Cohen: Anti-Gay Authority on the Rocks 2010

  • 'Whenever the Ordinary or Hierarch receives a report of a reserved delict which has at least a semblance of truth — notitiam saltem verisimilem — once the preliminary investigation has been completed, he is to communicate the matter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith …'

    Vatican Scrambles to Clarify Policy on Abuse Claims Stacy Meichtry 2010

  • 'Whenever the Ordinary or Hierarch receives a report of a reserved delict which has at least a semblance of truth — notitiam saltem verisimilem — once the preliminary investigation has been completed, he is to communicate the matter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith …'

    Vatican Scrambles to Clarify Policy on Abuse Claims Stacy Meichtry 2010

  • 'Whenever the Ordinary or Hierarch receives a report of a reserved delict which has at least a semblance of truth — notitiam saltem verisimilem — once the preliminary investigation has been completed, he is to communicate the matter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith …'

    Vatican Scrambles to Clarify Policy on Abuse Claims Stacy Meichtry 2010

  • See also: General Decree regarding the delict of attempted sacred ordination of a woman comments

    Archive 2009-05-01 2009

  • In most legal systems this will be both a crime and a tort/delict.

    Legal Rights Campbell, Kenneth 2009

  • For example the measure of damages may be different if the wrongful act is a tort/delict, as opposed to a breach of contract.

    Legal Rights Campbell, Kenneth 2009

  • To him Mr. Touchwood called loudly, enquiring after his master; but the clown, conscious of being taken in flagrant delict, as the law says, fled from him like a guilty thing, instead of obeying his summons, and was soon heard hupping and geeing to the cart, which he had left on the other side of the broken wall.

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • For either your eyes do not discern that it is Piercie Shafton, your most devoted Affability, who now stands before you, or else, your eyes discerning truly, your mind hath most erroneously concluded that he hath been guilty of some delict or violence to which his hand is a stranger.

    The Monastery 2008

  • Yet even in Persia men have not been wanting who have done their utmost to uproot the Vice: in the same Shiraz they speak of a father who, finding his son in flagrant delict, put him to death like Brutus or Lynch of Galway.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

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