criminality

Etymology

It is either borrowed from Middle French criminalité (“quality or fact of being criminal”), recorded in Middle French from 1539, or its source borrowed from Medieval Latin crīminālitās (“capital offence”), recorded in 1383 in a French source.^[2][3][4] Etymonline and the Shorter Oxford take it through the French word.^[5][6][7] The Latin noun is formed from crīminālis (“criminal”) and the suffix -tās,^[2][3] the adjective being classical Latin for the OED and Late Latin for Merriam-Webster.^[2][3] The adjective is from crīmen, the source of crime.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The quality or fact of being criminal: 1611, in Cotgrave's French–English dictionary.^[2][3] Etymonline dates it to the 1610s,^[5] and Dictionary.com to 1605–15.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The abstract sense has also come to cover criminal activity in general.^[2] From 1750 the word, chiefly in the plural, also meant a criminal act or practice; the 1989 edition of the OED had dated that sense only from 1849.^[2][9] Collins labels this countable use rare.^[10] Merriam-Webster also records a collective use for the criminal class.^[3] Black's Law Dictionary gives the state of being criminal and a criminal act or practice as the legal senses.^[11]

Timeline

• 1611 – the quality or fact of being criminal.^[2][3]
• 1750 – a criminal act or practice, chiefly in the plural.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The state or quality of being criminal or guilty of a crime: The court had to decide the criminality of the act.^{[3][10][2][11]}
2. Criminal activity in general: a rise in organized criminality.^[2][3]
3. A criminal act or practice; often in the plural.^{[2][3][11][10]}
4. Criminals collectively; the criminal class.^[3]

Related words

• crime
• criminal
• criminalize
• incriminate
• recrimination

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b c Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West