guilt
part of speech
noun (guilt — uncountable)
meaning for a pupil
1) The bad, uncomfortable feeling you have when you know you have done something wrong. tree →
2) The fact of having done something wrong or broken a law (the court proved his guilt). tree →
sense in the lessons
In feelings lessons, guilt is a normal emotion that tells us to put things right: say sorry, fix a mistake. Too much guilt about things that were not your fault is not helpful — talk to someone. In stories guilt changes characters (they confess or make amends). In law and mystery stories, the detective proves someone's guilt. Phrases: feel guilt, a sense of guilt, guilty (adjective), guilt trip, guilty conscience.
examples
- He felt guilt after he broke his sister's toy. tree →
- Saying sorry helped her guilt go away. tree →
- The detective found proof of the thief's guilt. tree →
- Don't carry guilt for something that wasn't your fault. tree →
- I felt guilty because I forgot her birthday. tree →
- The dog's guilty face showed it had eaten the cake. tree →
note
Homophone trap: «guilt» (feeling of doing wrong) and «gilt» (thin gold covering) sound the same. Adjective: guilty (I feel guilty). Opposite: innocence, innocent. Silent «u»: guilt.
In the corpora
- Guilt shows that you care, and saying sorry and being kind helps fix things.
- Guilt shows you care; saying sorry and doing something kind helps you let it go.
- Confession at church can lift the weight of guilt, but it does not replace saying sorry to the person you wronged.
- Confession can lift guilt, but it does not replace giving back what you took.
- Confession can ease guilt about teasing, but the sorry to the person teased is still needed.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «guilt» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.