mindmap root((CULP)) culpable Deserving to be condemned or blamed.
🌱The company was found guilty of culpable negligence in allowing the chemical waste to leak into the groundwater. 🌳Culpable normally means simply "guilty." To a lawyer, "culpable negligence" is carelessness so serious that it becomes a crime—for instance, building a swimming pool in your suburban yard with no fence around it, so that a neighbor's child could fall in and drown. But degrees of culpability are important in the law; someone who intended to do harm always faces a more serious challenge in court than someone who was merely careless. exculpate To clear from accusations of fault or guilt.
🌱The girls aren't proud of what they did that night, but they've been exculpated by witnesses and won't be facing criminal charges. 🌳Exculpate gets its meaning from the prefix ex-, which here means "out of" or "away from." A suspected murderer may be exculpated by the confession of another person. And exculpatory evidence is the kind that defense lawyers are always looking for. inculpate To accuse or incriminate; to show evidence of someone's involvement in a fault or crime.
🌱It was his own father who finally inculpated him, though without intending to. 🌳Inculpate is the opposite of exculpate, just as inculpatory evidence is the opposite of exculpatory evidence. By inculpating someone else, an accused person may manage to exculpate himself. Through plea bargaining, the prosecution can often encourage a defendant to inculpate his friends in return for a lighter sentence. mea culpa An admission of personal fault or error.
🌱The principal said his mea culpa at the school board meeting, but not all the parents were satisfied. 🌳Mea culpa, Latin for "through my fault," comes from the prayer in the Catholic mass in which, back when Latin was still the language of the mass, one would confess to having sinned "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" （"through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault"）. When we say "Mea culpa" today, it means "I apologize" or "It was my fault." But mea culpa is also common as a noun. So, for instance, a book may be a long mea culpa for the author's past treatment of women, or an oil company may issue a mea culpa after a tanker runs aground.