peccant
9.9
Showing a habit of doing morally wrong things such as lying or stealing
- adjective
- /ˈpɛkənt/
- Formal
:
pecaminoso
- The peccant teenager often skipped school and broke curfew.
Examples
-
The peccant actions of the politician led to widespread public outrage.
-
She felt guilty for her peccant behavior at the party last night.
-
Here we are going through the obligatory middle-of-act-two... "scorned wife throws peccant husband out" scene.
Synonyms
9.9
Able to sin or do wrong
is about having a tendency to act wrongly or be morally faulty
Antonyms
Compounds
How Wrong
Surface Forms
peccant positive
Morphology
peccant = peccable (opaque) = pecc + ant
The root 'pecc' is not a standalone modern English word and the sense is rare and learned, so average learners cannot reliably derive the meaning from visible parts.
Etymology
The word peccant comes from the Latin word peccare meaning 'to sin' and is related to familiar words like impeccable, which means 'not sinning', and peccadillo, which means 'small sin'. So peccant means morally faulty or likely to do wrong.