in delicto
- idiom
- Formal
:
en delicto
- The court found both parties in delicto and denied their claims for damages.
Examples
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Because the company was in delicto, it could not recover its losses in court.
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If a person is in delicto, they may not be entitled to legal relief.
-
He was in delicto!
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The defendant was caught in delicto during the robbery.
-
The court found both parties in delicto and denied their claims for damages.
-
If a person is in delicto, they may not be entitled to legal relief.
-
Because the company was in delicto, it could not recover its losses in court.
Synonyms
89
5.5
Legally responsible to pay for damage or loss
62
3.4
Responsible for causing a problem or mistake and deserving blame
26
7.5
Deserving blame for doing something wrong
Antonyms
How Guilty
Surface Forms
Morphology
in + delicto
The preposition 'in' is fully transparent, but 'delicto' is a Latin form not found in the provided dictionary entry; however it is cognate with Romance words like Spanish 'delito' and French 'délit' meaning 'crime', so a learner familiar with those cognates could infer 'in the crime' or 'in the act of committing a crime'. Because the phrase is a specialized Latin legal formula used in register-specific contexts and relies on knowledge of the Latin/root cognates rather than ordinary English composition, an average B1 learner would only partially be able to derive the precise legal sense.
Etymology
In delicto comes from Latin and pictures someone placed in a delicto, an old word for a wrong or fault. So the phrase is used to say a person is 'legally or morally at fault' and may lose certain legal help.