Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An acknowledgment of a personal error or fault.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- phrase My
fault , due to myerror ;my bad .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an acknowledgment of your error or guilt
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Latin meā culpā, through my fault : meā, feminine ablative of meus, my + culpā, ablative of culpa, fault.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From the Latin phrase meā culpā ("through my fault"), from mea ("my, mine") and culpa ("fault") in the ablative
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Examples
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ext11 commented on the word mea culpa
Latin. (my fault)
March 14, 2009
bilby commented on the word mea culpa
Listen up, everybody. We can all relax now. ext11 did it.
March 14, 2009
rolig commented on the word mea culpa
I once had a friend in St. Petersburg whose name was Maya Kulpa (Ма�? Кульпа), and her brother was Maksim Kulpa (Мак�?им Кульпа). It was hard to resist the temptation to refer to them collectively as Mea Maxima Culpa.
March 14, 2009
reesetee commented on the word mea culpa
Haha! Seriously? Were they deliberately named for that reason?
March 14, 2009
rolig commented on the word mea culpa
No, Maya and Maksim are fairly common Russian names, though the surname Kulpa is unusual. But such things do occur. I have a good friend in Ljubljana named Tadej (the Slovene version of Thaddaeus), which is pronounced a lot like the English word "today". His sister's name is Tamara, with the stress on the second syllable.
March 15, 2009
reesetee commented on the word mea culpa
You have quite a few "wordplay" friends, it seems! :-)
March 16, 2009
rolig commented on the word mea culpa
I guess I attract them.
March 16, 2009
sionnach commented on the word mea culpa
One of my classmates in graduate school was called Greg Samsa. And I worked with a woman called Laurel Hardy.
I blame the parents.
March 16, 2009
reesetee commented on the word mea culpa
I think attracting them is a good thing, rolig.
March 16, 2009
3llisonava commented on the word mea culpa
i am fascinated by the russian language, i wanted to get this tattoo, but i thought it would be completely inappropriate. Even if i made it a euphemism for the Lord
June 21, 2009