guilty pleasure
14
5.2
- noun
- /ˈɡɪlti ˈplɛʒər/
:
placer culpable
- Watching reality shows is my secret guilty pleasure, even though I know my friends disapprove.
It's like really good guilty pleasure TV.
- It's like really good guilty pleasure TV.
- It was my guilty pleasure reading, you could say.
- That's guilty pleasure reading and I sneak it in when I can.
- So love triangles are kind of one of my guilty pleasures.
- So anything with sugar is a guilty pleasure.
- Question number one is what's your secret guilty pleasure that people don't know about?
- I know this is like a guilty pleasure, right?
- But it's really difficult because a really bad sort of guilty pleasure of mine is, is reading the MailOnline.
- But usually if I'm traveling, my guilty pleasure is like Chick-fil-A.
- The last thing I'll say is this, this world's of speculative fiction series is actually my guilty pleasure reading.
- I I my guilty pleasure right now is I just bought a new Akai MPC, the drum machine.
Examples
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In the past, takeout has been my guilty pleasure, but I love that HelloFresh I'm getting the same restaurant quality meals for so much less.
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Celebrity gossip magazines are my guilty pleasure, if I must have one.
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Everyone needs a guilty pleasure.
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I'll just tell you straight up, today is a guilty pleasure for me.
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Each star chose a song they thought of as their guilty pleasure.
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Cat videos, the ultimate guilty pleasure of the online world.
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Question number one is what's your secret guilty pleasure that people don't know about?
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Brendan Fraser has probably been in more guilty pleasure movies than anyone in Hollywood.
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I rarely crave sweets, but my guilty pleasure is anything with cheese on top.
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It's why Commando is one of my all-time favorite movies; it's such an unfettered guilty pleasure.
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How Guilty
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'guilty' (feeling shame or remorse) + 'pleasure' (enjoyment) yields an enjoyment that causes feelings of guilt or embarrassment. This collocation follows a transparent modifier–noun pattern and appears in other languages (e.g., French 'plaisir coupable'), so a B1 learner who knows both words can reliably infer the meaning.
Etymology
Guilty pleasure joins the words guilty, meaning 'ashamed', and pleasure, meaning something you enjoy, so you can imagine someone enjoying something in secret. So, guilty pleasure means 'something you enjoy but feel a little ashamed about'.