Guilt

How to spell guilt

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce guilt

What does guilt mean?

1. nounThe fact of having committed an offence, or the uncomfortable feeling of having done wrong.

Guilt in a sentence

• She felt a deep sense of guilt after forgetting his birthday.

• The jury had to decide his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Where does guilt come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Guilt comes from the Old English noun gylt, which meant a crime, a sin, or a failure to do one's duty. Its history before that is genuinely murky: scholars have never agreed on a confident pre-English source, and it does not line up neatly with cognates in the other Germanic languages, so its deeper roots stay uncertain. Some have linked it speculatively to a Germanic root tied to owing or paying a debt, the idea being that wrongdoing left you owing something, but that connection is unproven. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from the simple fact of having committed an offence to the inner, emotional sense of feeling responsible for wrongdoing that dominates today. The silent spelling trap is the 'u' after the 'g', which keeps the 'g' hard and which the modern pronunciation gives no clue about, and the word also shares its exact sound with 'gilt', the thin layer of gold.

How the word is built

• guilt (from Old English gylt: a crime, sin, or offence)
• no affix

Words that sound like guilt

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• gilt: Covered thinly with gold or a gold-coloured finish.