sin

1 noun

1 (C, U) disobedience to God, or an offence against God or religious laws: The Bible says adultery is a sin. | the sin of pride | the Christian concept of sin | commit a sin (=do something that breaks a religious law)

2 (singular) informal something that you strongly disapprove of: It's a sin the way they waste all this money. | commit a sin: I had committed the unforgivable sin of forgetting her birthday. | it's a sin to do sth: It'd be a sin to evict them just because they haven't paid their rent.

3 live in sin old-fashioned if two people live in sin they live together in a sexual relationship without being married

4 as miserable/ugly/guilty as sin spoken very unhappy, ugly, guilty etc

5 for my sins spoken especially BrE an expression used to suggest jokingly that something is like a punishment: I'm the local party organizer, for my sins.

—see also: sinful, cover/hide a multitude of sins multitude (3), original sin — sinless adjective 2 verb sinned, sinning (I)

1 to break God's laws

(+ against): He has sinned against God.

2 be more sinned against than sinning old-fashioned used to say that someone should not be blamed for what they have done wrong, because they have been badly treated by other people

3 [c][p]technical[/p] the written abbreviation of sine