Sin

How to spell sin

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sin

What does sin mean?

1. nounAn act regarded as a serious moral or religious wrong.
2. verbTo commit a serious moral or religious wrong.

Sin in a sentence

• noun

  The sermon described greed as a serious sin.

• verb

  The priest warned that to lie is to sin.

• noun

  In many traditions, theft is considered a sin.

• verb

  He believed it was wrong to sin against his own values.

Where does sin come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Sin comes straight from the Old English word synn, which meant an offence, a misdeed, or a moral wrong, especially one against religious or divine law. It belongs to a wider family of Germanic words, with relatives in Old Saxon sundia and Old High German sunta, all carrying the same sense of guilt or transgression. Some scholars connect the deeper root to an old Indo-European idea of being 'the guilty one', possibly linked to a verb meaning 'to be', as in 'it is so, he is the one who did it', though that origin is not fully certain. The word was already in heavy use in early English religious writing, where it covered both the act of wrongdoing and the state of being guilty. Because it has been a plain native word for well over a thousand years, its spelling stayed short and simple, just three letters, which is why almost nobody trips over it.

How the word is built

• sin (from Old English synn: offence, wrongdoing); a single unanalysable root word