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Culprit   /kˈəlprɪt/   Listen
Culprit

noun
1.
Someone who perpetrates wrongdoing.  Synonym: perpetrator.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Culprit" Quotes from Famous Books



... warfare in Britain, he himself in Italy had proved no match for a robber. At last he despatched a tribune from his body-guard with many horsemen and threatened him with terrible punishments if he should not bring the culprit alive. Then this commander ascertained that the chief was maintaining relations of intimacy with the wife of another, and through the agency of her husband persuaded her on promise of immunity to cooperate with them. As a result the elusive leader ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... I am the culprit, I will do penance, and take the boy in hand myself. See, Will, you are to come with me to your tasks, nor give Mistress Forrester so much trouble.' And Lucy found herself free from the child's detaining hand, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... judges have met in the council-hall, A strange and a motley pageant, all: What seek they? to win for their land a name The brightest and best in the lists of fame? The light of Mercy's all-hallowed ray To look with grief on the culprit's way? Nay! watch the smile and the flushing brow, And in that crowd what read ye now? The daring spirit and purpose high, The fiery glance of the eagle eye That marked the Roman's haughty pride, In the days of yore by the Tiber's side? The stern resolve of the patriot's breast, When ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... I answered, taking it upon me to speak for my fellow-culprit, the Hindu—as he was to all seeming. 'The logic of facts is with us. We were booked through to Edinburgh, but we wanted to stop at Dunbar; and as the train happened to pull up, we thought we needn't waste time by going on all that way and then ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... foreigners, the right to try and execute the guilty was contended for, and in some cases admitted. Kienlung's demand of 'life for life' was always made, an innocent victim being not less acceptable than the real culprit. On one occasion (1772), when a Chinaman was killed in the Portuguese settlement of Macao, an Englishman, demanded by the Chinese, whom the Portuguese admitted to be guiltless, was by them given up, and by the Chinese ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... so suddenly with the culprit, the dignity, and majesty, and valor of Rose seemed to ooze gently out; and she stood blushing, and had not a word to say; no more had Edouard. But he hung his head, and she hung her head. And, somehow or other, whenever she raised her eyes to glance at him, he raised ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... of Marseilles rather than be questioned with that air of authority by a botanizing quack like La Galissoniere! Such villainous questions as he asked me about the state of the royal magazines! La Galissoniere had more the air of a judge cross-examining a culprit than of a Governor asking information of a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... his own brace and bit carefully secreted, his hand was descending on the shoulder of a man he could not recognize in the gloom, but who, on his knees and wheezing, was steadily boring into the head of a cask. The culprit made no effort to escape, and when Daughtry struck a match he gazed down into the upturned face of the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... our columns of the good work the Army is doing at the Prison Gate, in reclaiming from criminal courses the discharged prisoners who have served their time of confinement. In that critical moment, when the wide world is once more before the newly discharged culprit, when he emerges from confinement to overwhelming temptation, big it may be with fresh schemes of crime, armed with enlarged experiences to aid in its accomplishment, to be met, taken kindly by the hand, ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... twenty-fifth blow, broke an opening through a stone wall,—the executioner-drummer being commanded to deal, with his utmost strength, one hundred and sixty blows in succession, with that ponderous bar, (a bar with rough edges, no cylindrical rod,) not on the back of the culprit, but on his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... against tears, as Lionel Hezekiah very well knew. She put her arm about the sobbing culprit, and ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance to Oates or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of King's Bench. No eminent chief of a party has ever passed through many years of civil and religious dissension with more innocence than Richard Baxter. He belonged to the mildest and most temperate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The culprit had slipped off one of his handcuffs, crept through the wire fence unobserved, and was flying like the wind through ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... our duty to go straight to those unknown places, however dangerous they may be; for it is surely some cruel and wicked person who has stolen our Ozma, and we know it would be folly to search among good people for the culprit. Ozma may not be hidden in the secret places of the Winkie Country, it is true, but it is our duty to travel to every spot, however dangerous, where our beloved Ruler is likely to ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... a desk in his cabin when the orderly piloted the submarine boy in. The naval officer did not rise, nor did he ask the boy to take a seat. Jack Benson was very well aware that he stood in Mr. Mayhew's presence in the light of a culprit. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham

... the harvest-men allow drunkenness, laziness, swearing, quarrelling, nor lying, to go unpunished. The labourers in Suffolk, if they found one of their number guilty, would hold a court-martial among themselves, lay the culprit down on his face, and an executioner would administer several hard blows with a shoe studded with hob-nails. This was called "ten-pounding," and must have been very effectual in checking any of the ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... hoarse cry that rang out in the darkness, I knew too well that she had been struck fatally. It was this latter conviction that prevented me from turning back to the wood. You will perhaps blame me, but the fact is I feared that if I went there suspicion might fall upon me, now that the real culprit had ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... this that Karl had called out. The exclamation that escaped him was of a different import—so peculiarly intoned as at once to draw Caspar's attention from the culprit, and fix it ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... Amie du Drapeau shook her culprit at every epithet, emptied out a shower of gold and silver just won at play, from the bosom of her uniform, forced it into the dealer's hands, hurled him out of his own door, and drew her pretty weapon with ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... guns, sir, I hope you go further and catch the culprit," exploded Major Silsbee, bringing his fist ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... sheep-killing! This perverted infant simply needs—dingbats!" He shouted the last word. He twisted the radical off his feet, stooped, and laid the victim across a knee that was as solid as a tree-trunk, and with the flat of a broad hand began to whale the culprit with all his might. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... Beppo the gardener, and one morning the padrona's ducks were found dead. Peppina, her eyes dewy with crocodile tears, told the padrona that although the suspicion almost rent her faithful heart in twain, she must needs think Beppo the culprit. The local detective, or police officer, came and searched the unfortunate Beppo's humble room, and found no incriminating poison, but did discover a pound or two of contraband tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty francs, and jilted by ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... in a moment by the sight of the confused contrition of the culprit, coupled with his father's frank and kindly tone of avowal, that it had been a foolish improper frolic, and that he had been much displeased ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... unfavorable to my rival. Some rare sweetmeats, with baklava (sweet cake) made in the royal seraglio, were sent a few days ago from one of the Shah's ladies, as a present to our mistress; the rats ate a great part of them, and we gave out that the Georgian was the culprit, for which she received blows on the feet, which Nur Jehan administered. I broke my mistress's favourite drinking-cup; Shireen incurred the blame, and was obliged to supply another. I know that she is plotting against me, for she is eternally closeted ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... turned and stared at her. She looked down, and her face slowly grew to a deep red. She moved uneasily from one foot to the' other, like an awkward, embarrassed child. As he looked at her standing like a culprit before him, his first impulse was to laugh. He was not specially refined, but he was a kindly man, and it suddenly occurred to 'him ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... others commended her, but from that hour I learned to love her, and I became her defender. Other women would tolerate Frank Miller, but here was a young and gracious girl, strong enough and brave enough to pour on the head of that guilty culprit her social disapprobation and I gloried in her courage. I resolved she should be my wife if she would accept me, which she did, and I have never regretted my choice and I think that I have had as happy a life as usually falls to ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... Her voice was like spun silk as she replied: "If she does not answer when I speak, it is not my thought that she would answer to the rod. Anne!" She fixed her clear, commanding eyes again on the little culprit. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... the clergy sought to protect themselves and their property from the cruelty and rapacity of the banditti in the service of the barons. They were feared by the most powerful and unprincipled, because, at the same time that they excluded the culprit from the offices of religion, they also cut him off from the intercourse of society. Men were compelled to avoid the company of the excommunicated, unless they were willing to participate in his punishment. Hence much ingenuity was displayed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... doubtful antecedents, who had been seen lurking in the roadway near the scene of the crime. I was no longer amused. The matter promised to be embarrassing. What I had mistaken for a motor accident was evidently a case of savage assault and murder, and, until the real culprit was found, I should have much difficulty in explaining my intrusion into the affair. Of course I could establish my own identity; but how, without disagreeably involving the doctor's wife, could I give any adequate ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... to see you too," he began confusedly; then, conscious of the intimacy of the phrase, he added with a slight laugh: "The fact is, I'm a culprit looking for a peace-maker." ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... gymnastics, but being nothing of a gymnast I respectfully beg to be excused. While thus enjoying a pleasant hour in the garden, a series of resounding thwacks are heard somewhere near by, and looking around some intervening shrubs I observe a couple of far-rashes bastinadoing a culprit; seeing me more interested in this novel method of administering justice than in looking at the youngsters trying to climb ropes, the Governor leads the way thither. The man, evidently a ryot, is lying on his back, his feet are lashed together and held ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... consisting of four magistrates of irreproachable character, empowered to prosecute all nocturnal crimes, which during the last pontificate had been so common that their very numbers made impunity certain: these judges from the first showed a severity which neither the rank nor the purse of the culprit could modify. This presented such a great contrast to the corruption of the last reign,—in the course of which the vice-chamberlain one day remarked in public, when certain people were complaining of the venality of justice, "God wills not that a sinner die, but that he live and pay,"—that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... joke, a gesture was enough to bring a man under suspicion. The Elders sat as a regular court, hearing complaints and examining witnesses. It is true that they could inflict only spiritual punishments, such as public censure, penance, excommunication, or forcing the culprit to demand pardon in church on his knees. But when {171} the Consistory thought necessary, it could invoke the aid of the civil courts and the judgment was seldom doubtful. Among the capital crimes were adultery, blasphemy, witchcraft, and heresy. Punishments for all ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... knees before the Holy Man, he implored mercy, declaring that he would lead a new life, and set an example of all that was edifying, whereas before he had given nothing but scandal. Blessed Francis on his part knelt down before the culprit, and with many tears, addressed these remarkable words to him; "I, too," he said, "ask you to have pity upon me, and upon all of us who are priests in this diocese, upon the Church, and upon the Catholic, Apostolic, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... course of his progress, he was brought to the Three Cranes in the Vintry, before which an immense concourse was assembled to witness the spectacle. Though the exhibition made by the culprit, seated as he was on a great ragged beast purposely selected for the occasion, was sufficiently ludicrous and grotesque to excite the merriment of most of the beholders, who greeted his arrival with shouts of derisive laughter; still his woe-begone countenance, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... upon the top of the box and paused, as if to see that the coast was clear. He acted as if he felt himself an intruder. Quick as a flash there was a brown streak from the branch of a maple thirty feet away, and the owner of the box was after him. The culprit did not stop to argue the case, but was off, hotly pursued. I must not forget the pair of wood thrushes that are building a nest in a maple fifty or more feet away. How I love to see them on the ground at my feet, every motion and gesture ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... Barrister, spite of his antipathy to Methodists, would "weep in agony" over him! But before the Barrister draws bills of imagination on his tender feelings, would it not have been as well to adduce some last dying speech and confession, in which the culprit attributed his crimes—not to Sabbath-breaking and loose company,—but to sermon-hearing on the 'modus operandi' of the divine goodness in the work of redemption? How the Ebenezerites would stare to find ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... a furious rage, declared that some Unitarian must have perpetrated this insult, and that I must find the culprit. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... and country, although the crime for which he was condemned was some cruel and cowardly assassination, or attempt to commit such. "The liberal press," as the newspapers devoted to the agitation were designated, was filled with extenuations or denials of the culprit's guilt, and the most vengeful attacks were made upon all who sought to enforce the laws, and preserve peace and life from the ruffian hands of the Ribbonmen, and "the moral force agitators." Lord John Russell has often resorted to finesse ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... them," replied Alice, "and I find that is the easiest way to govern them. I seldom have to punish any one, and when I do it hurts me more than the culprit. In a way, children are like grown people and a little tact and a few words said in the right way are more potent ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... Baudius, professor in the university of Leyden, was a great drinker, and Culprit himself pleads guilty to the indictment. Habemus rerum confitentem. Here follow his own words, which I own I cannot translate without losing their beauty in the Latin, but the substance is, that he defies envy itself ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... the confession, which went more glibly the second time, was concluded, the investigator gave the culprit a toss in the direction of the Gammon farm, and shouted after him: "Go get that calf down out of that apple-tree, and set down with him and trace out your family relationship. You'll probably find you're ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... with poverty. He studied medicine, and took his degree when he was about twenty years old. From a child, he showed remarkable poetical powers, having made rhymes at the early age of five. Most of his published writings were produced during a period of less than two years. "The Culprit Fay" and the "American Flag" are best known. In disposition, Mr. Drake was gentle and kindly; and, on the occasion of his death, his intimate friend, Fitz-Greene Halleck, expressed his character in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... the morning by high-pitched voices in the room below. Lieutenant Sill and I had passed the night in neighboring caverns of the same miraculous feather-bed. We recognized the voice of the major, informing some culprit that he had just ten minutes to live, and that if he wished to send any dying message to his wife or children then and there was his last opportunity; and then followed the tramping of the guards as they retired from his ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... each of "his victims." Feodor had not been wounded, but now he was almost delirious, asking every other minute as the hours crept on for Natacha, who had not reappeared. That unhappy girl Rouletabille had steadily believed innocent. Was she a culprit? "Ah, if she had only chosen to! If she had had confidence," he cried, raising anguished hands towards heaven, "none of all this need have happened. No one would have attacked and no one would ever again attack the life of Trebassof. For I was not wrong in claiming ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... thought the overland coureur mad. A pirate heretic in the South Seas! Preposterous! Some Spanish rascal had turned pirate; so the governor gathered up two thousand soldiers to march with all speed for Callao, with hot wrath and swift punishment for the culprit. Drake had already sacked Callao, but he had missed the treasure ship. She had just left for Panama. The Golden Hind was lying outside the port becalmed {156} when Don Toledo came pouring his two thousand soldiers down to the wharves. The Spaniards ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... lessons had begun. They did not even excuse themselves, but were proceeding with a surly and ostentatious defiance to their seats, when Mrs. Martin was obliged to look up, and—as the eldest Hardee filed before her—to demand an explanation. The culprit addressed—a dull, heavy-looking youth of nineteen—hesitated with an air of mingled doggedness and sheepishness, and then, without replying, nudged his companion. It was evidently a preconcerted signal of rebellion, for the boy nudged stopped, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... that was more than the ordinary look which might belong to an elder brother. Leon's face still kept its look of fear, and there seemed to be struggling with this fear an impulse to fly, which he was unable to obey. Reginald looked like the master, Leon like the culprit ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... had been materially improved. Spangled canopies and soft turf couches do well to read of, but stiff limbs and anxious hearts are sterner realities, to say nothing of sundry woes inflicted on the culprit when discovered. But I am enlarging and ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... angry, and he sent his heralds to the four corners of fairyland to summon all his subjects to his presence that he might find out without delay who was the culprit. ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... bleeding finger to the crowd. On his half-drunken face there is plainly written: "I'll pay you out, you rogue!" and indeed the very finger has the look of a flag of victory. In this man Otchumyelov recognises Hryukin, the goldsmith. The culprit who has caused the sensation, a white borzoy puppy with a sharp muzzle and a yellow patch on her back, is sitting on the ground with her fore-paws outstretched in the middle of the crowd, trembling all over. There is an expression ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... good treatment with bad. Running through the papers with which his file was now full, he found that the one he sought was not there. This roused him in good earnest, for he was certain that he had not removed it himself and there was no one else who had the right to do so. He suspected the culprit,—a young lad who occasionally had access to his desk. But this boy was no longer in the office. He had dismissed him for some petty fault the previous week, and it took him several days to find him again. Meantime his ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... had become a critical one when I broke my collar-bone playing against Richmond, and suddenly ceased to be a culprit and became an invalid. At the time I was very sick at my footer ending so abruptly, but my accident was really a stroke of good luck, for I feel certain that I should have been turned out of the 'Varsity fifteen anyhow. An Irish international named Hogan had ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... and the news once spread, Vengeance hangs o'er the unknown culprit's head: And careful Shepherds extra hours bestow In patient watchings for the common foe; A foe most dreaded now, when rest and peace Should wait the season of ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... that the name of the first-lieutenant would strike terror to a culprit midshipman, threw himself back in the chair, and assumed an ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... customs wisely enjoin that every the remotest branch of the family shall be responsible for the payment of their adjudged and other debts; and in cases of murder the bangun, or compensation, may be levied on the inhabitants of the village the culprit belonged to, if it happens that neither he nor any of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... law, and repugnant to the feeling and practice of the present day, but on this evidence vouched by the travelled painter, John the Painter was condemned and executed. There was no doubt left on any mind either as to the culprit's guilt, or to his connexion with Silas Deane; but before his death he is said to have confessed to some naval officers, that most of what his accuser had testified against him, was true—that he had, indeed, applied to Deane, who had promised ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to tell de fust magistet I can find—dere! And you, too, you whited salt-peter! you ought dis minute to be pickin' of oakum in a crash gown and cropped hair! And you shall be, too, afore many days, ef eber I lives to get out'n dis house alive!" shrieked Katie, shaking her fist first at one culprit and then at the other, and glaring inextinguishable hatred and defiance upon both. For righteous wrath had rendered her perfectly insensible ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... arms, watching the vain struggles of the culprit, until he was reduced to a state of comparative calmness. He looked sad, rather than angry, and his dignity was not impaired by the ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic

... not only proved the forgery of the alleged Travels of Georg Ludwig von —— (that had been already established by Lord Strangford, whose last effort it was, and Sir Henry Rawlinson), but step by step traced it home to the arch-culprit Klaproth, was nothing ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... greatest, and this was punished with death, and with confiscation of goods, [Footnote: I. 4, 18, 3.] while the memory of the offender was declared infamous. Greater severity could scarcely be visited on a culprit. Treason comprehended conspiracy against the government, assisting the enemies of Rome, and misconduct in the command of armies. Thus Manlius, in spite of his magnificent services, was hurled from the Tarpeian Rock, because he was convicted of an intention to seize upon the government. Under the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... emerald, which the young Queen still wore round her neck, was a real talisman, and always told the truth; if any one even whispered a story, it just up and out with the truth at once, and shamed the culprit without remorse. So the emerald on these occasions would answer, 'Not so! the Princess Pepperina is asleep. It ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... the death of me at last!" said Mrs. Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. "And the ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens

... also who, when he prayed to la'ala'a, became possessed, told the cause of disease, and forbade the evil conduct of the suffering culprit. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... say, met with this mortifying exposure, it gave me a shock which I have not to this day recovered; and I cannot now see any one start up hastily in pursuit of another without fancying myself the culprit, and trembling accordingly. This sudden movement, therefore, of my grandmother's threw me into an alarming state of terror, and, quite still and subdued, I sat industriously ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... cousin in her testimony has given cause for suspicion; but I here declare her to be as innocent of wrong as I am; and I am only endeavoring to turn the eye of justice from the guiltless to the guilty when I entreat you to look elsewhere for the culprit who committed this deed." Pausing, she held her two hands out before him. "It must have been some common burglar or desperado; can you not bring ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... decide quickly. This miserable business is too much talked about already, and it will do as much harm to us as to you all if the name of the principal culprit—known at present only to the Public Prosecutor, the examining judge, and myself—should happen ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... we find the people on the following morning speaking of nothing but Silvain's wedding with Rose and of the hermit's bell. Nobody knows who has been the culprit, but Thibaut slily calculates that the hermit has rung before-hand, when Rose the bride kissed the dragoon. Having learned that the soldiers had been commanded to {67} saddle their horses in the midst of the dancing the night before, and that Belamy, sure of his prey, has ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... them, no severe punishments were inflicted at home. But the terrible sentence, which they dreaded worse than death, was past—they were sold to Jamaica. The necessity of doing this was bewailed by the whole family as a most dreadful calamity, and the culprit was carefully watched on his way to New-York, lest he should ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... nay; cease to grasp that cane.—While we are so conspicuously bless'd with laws to chastise a culprit, the mace of justice is the only proper weapon for the injured.—Let me talk with you. [Takes ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... at that time Rector of Ruan Lanihorne. The fellow-magistrate was a trifle lax in his opinions, and on his expressing a sceptical view, "Mr. Whitaker started up in a burst of passion. The justice turned pale, and his lips quivered with fear. Not a culprit before him, at the moment of commitment, ever trembled more; and Whitaker imperiously charging him with infidelity, the old gentleman made a confession of his faith, to an extent which surprised me." He seems to have been "at best ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... told you that that braid was torn! I told you to sew it up! I told you you'd trip and hurt yourself," cried Maud reproachfully; but the culprit only laid her hand over her heart, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... with this homage, which, she said, was greater than his offence. The guards, whose business it was to proceed to a verification, believed the culprit to be the devil, because never in their wits had they seen an "I" so perpendicular as was the old man. He was marched in triumph through the town to the palace of the duke, to whom the guards and others stated ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... loosed me and turned to seize the real culprit but, profiting by the momentary confusion, he ducked and squirmed, wriggled and dived under and between such arms and hands as made to stay him and, breaking free, took to his heels, and the crowd, losing all interest in us, betook itself to the chase, shouting ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... agreed with his daughters that it behoved him to punish the culprit in this matter, but, nevertheless, he thought that it would be better for him to let it go unpunished than to bring his boy into collision with such a one as Pat Carroll. He twice talked the matter over with Florian, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... demanding reparation. The authorities sent a message to Capt. Reid, demanding that the man who fired the shots be given up. Soon a boat came from the "Liberty," bringing a man who was handed over to the authorities as the culprit. A brief examination into the case showed that the man was not the guilty party, and that his surrender was a mere subterfuge. The people then determined to be trifled with no longer, and made preparations to take vengeance ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... but Miss Eldridge," said the culprit penitently; "and I know she won't repeat it; and I'll never do so any more, if you'll let me come to you with my foolish little troubles. It seems something like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... stripped, put on the ground face downwards; one man sits on his head, and another on his feet. Two men are put on either side of him, each with a bundle of birch-rods in his hand. Ten times each of them has to strike him with the rods, to make up the twenty lashes. I looked at the face of the culprit; it was as white as chalk. His lips were moving. I thought he was reciting the prayer: "And He, the Merciful, will forgive sin, and will not destroy. . . ." Up went the rods, down they went: a piercing cry . . ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... Mr. Mann, don't you begin!" begged the culprit "If I am academic in school in my speech, let me be relieved out of sessions, ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison

... and Robespierre, refused to obey the formal summons of the Convention when it came. Those powerful protectors made vigorous representations to their friends in Paris, and Buonaparte was saved. Both they and he might well rely on the distinguished service rendered by the culprit at Toulon; his military achievement might well outweigh a slight political delinquency. On April first, 1794, he assumed the duties of his new command, reporting himself at Nice. Lapoype went to Paris, appeared at the bar of the Convention, and was triumphantly acquitted. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... that she met him accidentally, and not on purpose. When they use a litter, no one may pass under it on pain of death. The vestals are corrected by stripes for any faults which they commit, sometimes by the Pontifex Maximus, who flogs the culprit without her clothes, but with a curtain drawn before her. She that breaks her vow of celibacy is buried alive at the Colline Gate, at which there is a mound of earth which stretches some way inside the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... by any chance consulted Christophe about anything he was going to do:—(did he know himself?).—He only told him about things when they were done.—And then?... Then, what could he do but look in dumb reproach at the culprit, and shrug his shoulders and smile, like an old uncle who knows that he ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... said Mr. Brooke, more kindly. He had the true gentleman's instinct; he could not bear to see a woman stand while he was seated, although she was only his daughter's maid, and—presumably—a culprit awaiting condemnation. "Now tell me all ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... angry with him, I was jealous of him, because she had cared for him. I knew she had. I knew why she had. Tim and I were far apart. But he had made the breach. All the wrong wrought was his, and yet he sat there, calmly eying me, as though he were a righteous judge and I the culprit. ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... anyone by means of the trial by hot iron or boiling water, and no one must presume, by a superstitious innovation, to practice what is not sanctioned by the teaching of the holy fathers. For it is allowable that public crimes should be judged by our authority, after the culprit has made spontaneous confession, or when witnesses have been approved, with due regard to the fear of God; but hidden and unknown crimes must be left to Him Who alone knows the hearts of the children of men." The same would seem to apply to the law concerning ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... sensitiveness and their imagination exaggerate all things out of due measure. In this matter, also, schoolmasters often go wrong. They do not know how to handle delicate organizations. They strike fiercely, when a few words said at the right moment would have much more effect on the culprit.... Monnica's son suffered as much from the rod as he took pride in his successes at games. If, as Scipio, he was filled with a sensation of glory in his battles against other boys, no doubt he pictured himself a martyr, a St. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... know that I still keep a record of these undying passions of mine with a picture of each culprit attached, and Carlton is 999. I thought, when I was sixteen, I would record the one divine fire that was like to consume me, and now I have eighteen volumes of this 105-degrees-in-the-shade literature, all bound alike in a perfect ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... generally in the financial district. His story is already public property, for the case attracted wide attention in the daily press; but, inasmuch as the writer's object is to point a moral rather than adorn a tale, the culprit's name and the name of the company with which he was connected need not ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... do the lieutenant justice, his mode was not near so tedious or painful as that practised by the grand signior, who sometimes causes the ceremony to be divided into three acts, giving the culprit a drink of spring water to refresh him between the two first; nor was it so severe as the burning old women formerly for witchcraft. In fact, the "walking gallows" was both on a new and simple plan; and after ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... purer;" and the happy one is straightway led to Paradise. But when the vices outweigh the virtues, a dark and frightful image, featured with ugliness and exhaling a noisome smell, meets the condemned soul, and cries, "I am thy evil spirit: bad myself, thy crimes have made me worse." Then the culprit staggers on his uncertain foothold, is hurled from the dizzy causeway, and precipitated into the gulf which yawns horribly below. A sufficient reason for believing these last details no late and foreign interpolation, is that the Vendidad itself contains all that is ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... unavoidably detained | | engineering officer. | | | | But once into space, the Branchell becomes the scene of | | some frightening events—the medical officer is murdered, | | and Snookums appears to be the culprit. Mike the Angel | | indulges himself in a bit of sleuthing, and the facts he | | turns up lead to a most unusual ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... right to be heard in his own defence," said Arthur, with the cool justice of an Englishman; and he stopped the angry Carlo's arm, who was going up to the culprit with all the Italian vehemence of oratory and gesture. Arthur went on to say something in bad Italian about the excellence of an English trial by jury, which Carlo was too much enraged to hear, but to which Francisco paid attention, and turning to Piedro, he asked him if he was willing to be judged ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... that it might just as well have been done by Mrs. Swinton as by her son. In fact, after a close perusal of the second check, to which he had brought some knowledge of handwriting, he was more inclined to regard her as the culprit. He knew Dick slightly, and certainly could not credit him with the act of a fool. As a parting ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... of remission which at the instance of Henry VIII. were granted to Michael de St. Aignan in respect of the murder of James du Mesnil are preserved in the National Archives of France (Register J. 234, No. 191), and after the usual preamble, recite the culprit's petition in these terms:— ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... lit and search made, not a culprit could be found. They were all in bed sound asleep. The only one awake was the Boy in the little bed on which lay scattered potatoes, biscuits ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... rudiments of composition, he determined to compose a mass. The news got abroad that the little Niccolo was working on a grand mass, and the great Leo, the chief of the conservatory, sent for the trembling culprit. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... imprisonment in several American prisons, he went to Germany, where he became the editor of the "Free Press" in Berlin, but his original and biting criticism of bureaucracy again brought him in conflict with the powers that be. The Berlin prison, Ploetzensee, soon closed its doors on the culprit. Even to-day those who visit that famous institution of civilization are still ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... intriguer has been guilty of a very faulty and culpable sectarian dodge, which can not be too severely reproached. But if it be in fact t'other fellow's bull that has gored this one's ox, then the facts should come out, and the culprit can not escape censure by raising the stop-thief cry of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... with a stout boot under the rib; but every now and then, the furibund jarvey apologised to us for the slowness of our course by asking—"Won't I serve him out when I gets a whip!" A whip he at last got, and made up for lost time by belabouring the lazy culprit in a very scientific manner; and having got us all into a gallop, he became quite pleasant and communicative. All the people in Monmouthshire are Welsh, that is very clear; and Monmouthshire is as Welsh a county as Carnarvon, in spite of the maps of geographers, and the circuits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... and Kirstie, though still caring for Archie in her heart, allows herself to become Frank's victim. Old Kirstie is the first to perceive something amiss with her, and believing Archie to be the culprit, accuses him, thus making him aware for the first time that mischief has happened. He does not at once deny the charge, but seeks out and questions young Kirstie, who confesses the truth to him; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for many years, and he hated all blackmailers with a just and deadly hatred. He was also glad to oblige the strong Senator, who was just now supporting the government with his influence and his millions. Volterra was sure of the culprit's identity and explained that the detective who had been sent to investigate the palace after Sassi's accident had seen the carpenter and would recognize him. Nothing would be easier than to send for Gigi to do a job at the palace, ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... her rise and stand before him, a culprit, but she would not. She sat still, in the same chair where she had sat happily writing to Vanno a few hours before. Though she trembled, she faced the Prince without shrinking outwardly. Perhaps to ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... as she captured that culprit in the conservatory, and led her off to the kitchen, "I want you to try especially hard to-day to do just as I want you to, and to help ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... suppose I want of one pair of gloves!" continued Archy, angrily, as he seized one of the oars, and aimed a blow at the head of the culprit, which, however, Cyd was expert enough to dodge. "Go and get the other pair; and if you are gone half as long as you were ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... the coulpe. To make one's coulpe means to prostrate one's self flat on one's face during the office in front of the prioress until the latter, who is never called anything but our mother, notifies the culprit by a slight tap of her foot against the wood of her stall that she can rise. The coulpe or peccavi, is made for a very small matter—a broken glass, a torn veil, an involuntary delay of a few seconds at an office, a false note in church, etc.; this suffices, and the coulpe is made. The coulpe is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... effect of the discharge concealed thereby. This drugget lining must have been invaluable to him; for upon another occasion, it did duty for a pocket-handkerchief. I must say, that when I saw the otherwise respectable appearance of the culprit, his filthy practices astounded me. Behind us were two gentlemen who were returning to Louisville, and whom we ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... the crouching culprit, and as it slunk away in the direction of the house, Edna found herself alone, face to face with the object of her aversion, and she almost wished that the earth would open and swallow her. Mr. Murray came close to her, held her hands down ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... his charge into some shallow grave in the forest, and hoaxed Trenholme, with the help of an accomplice; and he did not scruple to hint that if Trenholme had not been a coward he would have seized the culprit, and so obviated further mystery and after difficulties. There was enough truth in this view of the case to make it very insulting to Trenholme. But Bates did not seem to cherish anger for that part ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... a creature as yesterday's culprit," thought Nekhludoff, listening to all that was going on before him. "They are dangerous, and we who judge them? I, a rake, an adulterer, a deceiver. We are not dangerous. But, even supposing that this boy is the most dangerous ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... served her as a pillow during the night. Upon each of the sacred bits she had affixed a label with the name of the saint it belonged to, which occasioned the disclosure. When Madame Letitia heard of this pious theft, she insisted on having the culprit immediately and severely punished; and though the Princesse Borghese, as the innocent cause of poor Rosina's misfortune, interfered, and Rosina herself promised never more to plunder saints, she was without mercy turned away, and even denied money sufficient ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... merry party. Amy believed that all the morning's trouble had been overcome, and did not realize that being out on bail was in itself sort of an imprisonment to a man of honor. Until the real culprit was found Frederic Kaye would still be under suspicion; yet he could enjoy his parole, and this ride had been purposely planned by his friends as a means of influencing that variable public opinion which ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... said that Bentwood was the actual culprit, and that he experimented with certain poisons that produced quite new results. Some said that the Rajah committed suicide. Perhaps the poison administered to him took that form. Anyway, Bentwood disappeared, and it was generally understood that he met his death ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... as far as the culprit was concerned, were not encouraging. In the first place she would not acknowledge Mrs. Cameron's right to interfere in her life; in the next harshness had a very ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... sinner, criminal, culprit, delinquent, offender, malefactor, transgressor, miscreant, profligate, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... from behind him, and from doors and windows, and from the opposite side of the street, and at length from before him, the very welkin rung with the cries of "Stop thief! stop thief!" A hundred eyes were strained to catch a glimpse of the culprit; but Rodney dashed on, the crowd never thinking that he was the hunted fox, but only one of the hounds in pursuit, eager to be "in at the death." At the corner of Fifth and Market-streets, a porter was standing by his wheelbarrow. ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... over the clothes-line to dry," suggested Cricket, darkly eying the chief culprit. "Dear me! how you ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... of him. They had talked with the thrush, and he had shown them in which direction that Kidnapped-by-Crows had travelled. Afterward, they had met a dove-cock, a starling and a drake; they had all wailed about a little culprit who had disturbed their song, and who was named Caught-by-Crows, Captured-by-Crows, and Stolen-by-Crows. In this way, they were enabled to trace Thumbietot all the way to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... are true, and if Madame de Grammont was the culprit, it is a sad confirmation of the old gibe, "Skittish in youth, prudish in age." It can only be pleaded in extenuation that some youth which was not skittish, such as Sarah Marlborough's, matured or turned into something worse than "devotion." And ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... The culprit hastened to repair his mistake; lighting another match he let it burn for a time before offering it to his master. But Garofoli would not ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot

... to return to Matavai. In the evening a messenger arrived from him to acquaint me that, in his absence, the sheep which I had trusted to his care had been killed by a dog; and that he had sent the culprit, hoping that I would kill him for the offence he had committed. This poor sheep had been so much diseased that I could not help suspecting he died without the dog's assistance, and that the story of the dog was invented to prevent my attributing ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... expression changed; with nostrils dilated like a hunter scenting prey, his rather inert, cold features became transfigured; he was the man who listened, the cruel judge who sentenced. And she hoped, also the kind friend who would consider the youth and inexperience of the culprit. To the morbidly acute hearing of the woman, the music had a ring of hollow sonority after the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... apparent that the party in power had no desire to make any fight, for the Chancellor anxiously excused Lindsay to the King as "ane man of the old world, that cannot answer formallie nor get speech reverentlie in your Grace's presence." This roused the brother of the culprit, a certain Mr. Patrick Lindsay, otherwise described as a Churchman, who was by no means content to see the head of his house thus described, nor yet that Lord Lindsay should come "in the King's will," thus accepting forfeiture or any other penalties that ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... repellent manner. It was plain to Kate that her relatives would not receive her till they had learned more of the details of her banishment from home from her father, and had made up their minds how to treat her. She felt that even the serving woman regarded her somewhat in the light of a culprit, and it was with a mind divided betwixt amusement and girlish shame that she followed the attendant into the bed chamber that ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... a change in form, since a banished man could not exist alone. In either case the selection was of the simplest kind. The society extruded from itself one who violated its rules. This is the fundamental sense of all punishments, like execution, transportation, or imprisonment, which remove the culprit from the society, permanently or for a time. Other punishments contained originally a large element of vengeance, vengeance being a primary impulse of great force to satisfy those whom the crimes injured ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... those disconnected whispers—letters discovered or stolen—blackmail—but such whispers were too often the whiffs from energetic but empty minds, always floating about and never seeming to bring any culprit to book. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... to discount everything you have said, Baron," he replied dryly. "You have twice attempted to escape from the fortress. An innocent man awaits his trial with confidence, knowing that it cannot be other than favorable. The culprit alone flees." ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... what of Cowley's property?' An ominous silence ensued, broken only by a sotto voce from the late Mrs. Procter: 'Well, my dear, you have put your foot in it; no more invitations for you in a hurry,' But she did the kind old man, then above ninety, wrong. The culprit continued to receive the same invitations and ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... horse, I climbed again to my seat and covered myself with the star bed-quilt, which served as an only too beautiful carriage robe. Thus I, glowing behind that gorgeous, ever-radiating star, was taken by Mrs. Kobbe, I doubt not, for the culprit, as she finally emerged from the house and the captain was discovered innocently returning along the ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... and paused to give the horses a breathing. The young moon hung in the west, and its silver crescent symbolized to Miss Hargrove the hope that was growing in her heart. "Amy," she said, "don't you remember the song we arranged from 'The Culprit Fay'? We certainly should sing it here on this mountain. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... will be tempted not to knock off work when his Cessation Day comes round, and will prefer to work for no wage rather than not at all. So that perhaps there will have to be a law making Cessation Day compulsory, and the Overseers will be empowered to punish infringement of this law by forbidding the culprit to work for ten days after the first offence, twenty after the second, and so on. But I don't suppose there will often be need to put this law in motion. The children of the Dawn, remember, will not be the puny self-ridden creatures that we are. They will not say, 'Is this what I want ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... digging into the flesh; the ungula, said to have been a pair of scissors; the scorpio, and pecten, iron combs or rakes for tearing. And there was the wheel, fringed with spikes, on which the culprit was stretched; and there was the fire ready lighted, with the water hissing and groaning in the large caldrons which were placed upon it. Callista had lost for ever that noble intellectual composure of which we have several times spoken; she shuddered at ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... guarded, every suspicious vehicle examined, and strangers ran the risk of being mobbed before they could prove their identity. False rumors now and then ran through the city, raising and quelling the passions like a tide. At one time the culprit is caught and safely lodged in the Bastile; at another he is as free as the deer on the plains. Cassier did escape, but some incidents of the chase ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... like a culprit before a judge, who, though conscious of his innocence, has not courage to meet the glance of him on whom his fate depends. But not on her own account had she that throbbing fear at her heart; she ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale



Words linked to "Culprit" :   wrongdoer, offender



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