culprit

• n.囚人、犯罪者；犯罪で告発された人

culp-」の「懲らしめる」「断罪する」が語源で、語源的には「inculpable」と同じ。

culprit

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.

1. He knows the culprit but is not letting on.

彼は犯罪者が誰なのか知っているが、口をつぐんでいない。

2.The culprit will be whipped when he is found.

その犯人は見つかったら鞭を打たれる。

3.The police are now on the scent of the culprit .

警察は犯罪者を追跡している。

4.The police followed home the clue and finally caught the culprit .

警察は手がかりに基づいて最後まで追跡し、ついにこの犯人を捕まえた。

5.The police put the culprit in jail.

警察は犯罪者を刑務所に投入した。