6 uses
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Definition
to violate a rule, promise, or social norm
- Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold.Chapter 2 -- The Market Place (9% in)
- "Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!" cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before.Chapter 3 -- The Recognition (86% in)
- The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had a long established and legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries.Chapter 8 -- The Elf-child and the Minister (9% in)
- The earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and half-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost—as he needs must think it—of some defunct transgressor.Chapter 12 -- The Minister's Vigil (38% in)
- The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them.Chapter 18 -- A Flood of Sunshine (13% in)
- They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them.Chapter 21 -- The New England Holiday (73% in)
There are no more uses of "transgress" in The Scarlet Letter.
Typical Usage
(best examples)