Meaning & use
mea culpa
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Meanings
nouncountable
A statement in which someone admits that an error or wrongdoing was their own fault.
Grammar: Takes 'a': offer a mea culpa; the plural is mea culpas.
Patterns
- offer a mea culpa
- issue a mea culpa
- a public mea culpa
The mayor delivered a mea culpa after the city lost the funding documents.
His column this week reads like a long mea culpa for the predictions he got wrong.
interjectionfixed phraseformalhumorous
Said or written to admit personally that you were at fault.
Grammar: Stands alone as an exclamation; more dramatic than simply saying sorry.
Patterns
- mea culpa!
I forgot her birthday again—mea culpa.
Mea culpa, he wrote; the broken shelf was my doing.
Word forms
| plural | mea culpas |
|---|
Common combinations
- offer a mea culpa
- After the mix-up in scheduling, she offered a mea culpa at the team meeting.
- issue a public mea culpa
- The company issued a public mea culpa for the misleading advertisement.
- a rare mea culpa
- In a rare mea culpa, the critic admitted he had misjudged the film.
Synonyms and how they differ
- apology
- An apology expresses regret for anything; a mea culpa specifically admits the fault was your own.
- admission
- An admission is any acknowledgment of truth; a mea culpa is a public, often formal admission of personal fault.
- confession
- A confession usually reveals a fuller or hidden wrongdoing, often in legal or religious settings.
Opposites
Word family
- culpable adjective
- deserving blame; guilty of a fault
- culpability noun
- the state of being to blame for something
Practice
When the data turned out to be wrong, the researcher offered a public ___.
Choose one answer.
A mea culpa is an admission of one's own error, which fits the context. A prophecy predicts the future, a verdict is a judgment, and a tribute is an expression of praise—none of these admit fault.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “mea culpa”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.