culprit: [17] Culprit appears to be a fossilized survival of the mixture of English and French once used in English courts. The usually accepted account of its origin is that it is a lexicalization of an exchange in court between the accused and the prosecutor. If the prisoner pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge read out against him, the prosecutor would have countered, in Law French, with ‘Culpable: prit d’averrer …’, literally ‘Guilty: ready to prove’. (English culpable [14] comes ultimately from Latin culpa ‘guilt’, and prit is the Anglo- Norman form of what in modern French has become prêt ‘ready’, from Latin praestus – source of English presto).
The theory is that this would have been noted down by those recording the proceedings in abbreviated form as cul. prit, which eventually came to be apprehended as a term used for addressing the accused. => culpable, presto
culprit (n.)
1670s, from Anglo-French cul prit, contraction of Culpable: prest (d'averrer nostre bille) "guilty, ready (to prove our case)," words used by prosecutor in opening a trial. It seems the abbreviation cul. prit was mistaken in English for an address to the defendant.
实用例句
1. He knows the culprit but is not letting on.
他知道罪犯是谁，但却闭口不说。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The culprit will be whipped when he is found.
那个罪犯被找到后就要挨鞭子.
来自《简明英汉词典》
3. The police are now on the scent of the culprit.
警方正在追踪罪犯.
来自《简明英汉词典》
4. The police followed home the clue and finally caught the culprit.
