Both Uses
culprit
in
The Great Fire
(Auto-generated)
- They demanded a culprit — and Catherine O'Leary was the handiest target in sight.†
p. 124.6 *culprit = person responsible for a wrongdoing
- To do so would have forced people to look elsewhere for a culprit — a search that would have invited questions about the city's blatant lack of emergency planning.†
p. 135.8
Definitions:
-
(1)
(culprit) someone responsible for a wrongdoing -- especially a criminal; or something that caused a problem
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) More rarely culprit can reference anything identified as the cause of a problem -- such as a defective part that broke a machine.