What does crimina mean?
Crimina is the Latin plural of crimen, a word meaning a charge, accusation, or offence. It is not an ordinary English vocabulary item; instead, it survives in specialised academic contexts — histories of Roman law, studies of canon law, and editions of medieval legal texts — where Latin terms are conventionally kept untranslated. In such settings, crimina denotes the specific accusations or categories of wrongdoing laid against an individual or addressed by a statute, as when scholars catalogue the crimina alleged in an ecclesiastical trial. Readers will most often encounter it in footnotes, translations, or legal-history discussions rather than in journalism or conversation. For anyone studying the roots of Western legal language, however, the word is significant: crimen is the direct ancestor of English words such as crime, criminal, criminology, and even discriminate (via its sense of 'decision' or 'judgement'), making crimina a small but revealing window into how ancient Roman legal thought continues to shape modern concepts of guilt and accusation.
nounCrimina is the Latin plural of crimen, meaning 'charges' or 'accusations'; in English it appears only in scholarly, legal-historical, or ecclesiastical contexts rather than everyday usage.
- In legal and historical scholarship: charges, accusations, or offences (the Latin plural of crimen).
"The medieval court records enumerated the crimina brought against the accused monk."
"The canon lawyers catalogued the crimina alleged against the bishop."
"Roman jurists distinguished among various crimina under imperial law."
Crimina is itself the plural of the Latin singular crimen; no further English plural exists.
"Several serious crimina were recorded in the tribunal's annals."
Every modern 'criminal' traces back to one Latin noun: crimen — and its plural, crimina, still echoes through law faculties today.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of crimina
Crimina derives from the Latin noun crimen, meaning judgement, charge, or accusation, which itself likely stems from the verb cernere ('to decide, to sift'). As the plural form, crimina simply marks multiple charges or offences in Latin texts. The singular root passed into Romance languages and, via Old French, into English as 'crime' in the Middle Ages, while learned borrowings later produced 'criminal', 'criminate', and 'criminology'. Its closest surviving cognates in English are therefore the family of crime-related terms descended from the same Latin source.
How crimina is actually used
Crimina is not part of everyday English; it surfaces mainly in academic writing on Roman law, canon law, and medieval history, where Latin terminology is retained. Writers addressing a general audience would normally use 'crimes' or 'offences' instead.
Easily confused with crimina
Crimina is the plural of the Latin term crimen used in historical and legal scholarship, whereas crimes is the ordinary English word for offences.