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''mea culpa'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

mea culpa - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Interjection

mea culpa

• My fault, due to my error; I am to blame.
  • ✤ Synonyms: my bad, peccavi
  • ✤ Coordinate terms: nostra culpa, tua culpa

Noun

mea culpa (plural mea culpas or mea culpae or meis culpis)

• An instance of mea culpa; an apology.
  • ✤ Synonym: peccavi
  • ✤ Coordinate terms: nostra culpa, tua culpa
  • ✤ For Example, when St. Anthony ſaid his Confiteor, which he did often enough, all the Spectators fell down on their Knees, and gave themſelves ſuch rude Mea Culpa’s as was enough to beat the breath out of their Bodies.¹
  • ✤ Basketball had been replaced by breathless commentators cross-talking and speculating, politicians on split screens eagerly interrupting each other to find scapegoats, and most mute (male) state officials, including Hawaii Gov. David Ige, opening their mouths to sputter (paraphrasing here) — golly gee, we don’t know what happened, but we plan to find out — mea culpas.²
  • ✤ The president refused to offer any sort of mea culpa on Tuesday, even as the Taliban celebrated their “independence” from America with gunfire in the streets of Kabul.³
  • ✤ At her trial, lawyers convinced Manning to issue a mea culpa: […]⁴
  • ✤ Tucker Carlson, a conservative podcaster, has said he is “tormented” by his support of Donald Trump, issuing in an extraordinary mea culpa that called for “a moment to wrestle with our own consciences”.⁵

Verb

mea culpa (third-person singular simple present mea culpa’s, present participle mea culpa’ing, simple past and past participle mea culpa’ed)

• (ambitransitive) To apologize for something, especially excessively.
  • ✤ When it was over and he grew tired of not being invited to the good parties on the Vineyard, he mea culpa’ed his way back into the good graces of the liberals who’d abandoned old LBJ years earlier.⁶

Etymology

From the Latin phrase meā culpā (“through my fault”), ablative case of mea culpa (“my fault, guilt”), taken from the Confiteor, a traditional penitential prayer in Western Christianity.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˌmeɪ.əˈkʊl.pə/, /ˌmeɪ.əˈkʌl.pə/, /ˌmiː.əˈkʊl.pə/, /ˌmiː.əˈkʌl.pə/
• Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1692, The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady ⸺ Travels into Spain: […], 2nd edition, London: […] Samuel Crouch […], page 62: ↩

2. 2018 January 13, Tad Bartimus, “When There’s Nuke Headed Your Way, ‘Do What You Gotta Do’”, in Civil Beat: ↩

3. 2021 September 1, Michael D. Shear, Jim Tankersley, “Biden Defends Afghan Pullout and Declares an End to Nation-Building”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[1]}$, →ISSN, archived from the original on 15 February 2022: ↩

4. 2022 October 27, Simon Parkin, “README.txt by Chelsea Manning review – secrets and spies”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[2]}$, →ISSN, archived from the original on 16 February 2023: ↩

5. 2026 April 21, Edward Helmore, “Tucker Carlson says he regrets backing Donald Trump and is ‘tormented by it’”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[3]}$, →ISSN, archived from the original on 22 April 2026: ↩

6. 2013 November, Stephen Hunter, The Third Bullet: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel (Bob Lee Swagger; 8), New York, NY: Pocket Books, →ISBN, pages 423–424: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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