What does crimine mean?
'Crimine' is not a living word of everyday English but a Latin legal term that survives inside the specialised language of law and legal history. It is an inflected form of the classical Latin noun crimen, meaning a charge, accusation, or criminal offence, and it appears in English jurisprudence chiefly within set phrases inherited from Roman and civil law. The best-known example is 'crimine laesae maiestatis', describing the grave offence of treason against sovereign authority; another is 'in crimine', used when speaking of the particular charge on which an accused stands indicted. Because these formulas were carried into English legal writing at a time when Latin remained the professional language of the courts, 'crimine' persists today mainly in statutes, treatises, and translations dealing with older law. For the general reader, encountering it signals formal, historical, or technical legal context rather than casual usage, and its meaning can usually be recovered by reading it simply as 'offence' or 'charge'.
nounIn legal Latin used within English-language jurisprudence, 'crimine' denotes an offence or charge, appearing chiefly in established legal phrases such as 'in crimine' (in respect of an alleged offence) and 'crimine laesae maiestatis' (the crime of treason against sovereign authority). It is not a word of ordinary English vocabulary but a borrowed term of art from Roman and civil law.
- A charge or offence in legal Latin, surviving in English jurisprudence through fixed phrases such as 'in crimine' and 'crimine laesae maiestatis'.
"The indictment charged the peer with high treason, naming it expressly as crimine laesae maiestatis."
"Counsel argued that the writ could not stand because no offence was specified in crimine."
"The medieval statute treated the offence as crimine laesae maiestatis, punishable by forfeiture of all estates."
As a neuter second-declension Latin noun, the plural is 'crimina'; in English legal-historical writing the plural is rare and normally italicised.
"The treatise catalogued the various crimina recognised under Roman law."
Long after Latin stopped being spoken, English courtrooms were still charging defendants 'in crimine' — a fossil of Rome's criminal code that never quite went extinct.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of crimine
'Crimine' derives from the classical Latin noun crimen ('charge, accusation, offence'), whose deeper origin is debated but may relate to the verb cernere ('to decide, sift'). English absorbed the term indirectly through the vocabulary of Roman and canon law, which long supplied Latin formulae to courts across Europe. As a result, 'crimine' survives in modern legal writing only as part of inherited Latin phrases, alongside cognates such as 'criminal', 'incriminate', and 'recriminate' that entered ordinary English more fully.
How crimine is actually used
'Crimine' belongs to the register of legal history and civil-law scholarship rather than everyday speech; it appears almost exclusively italicised within otherwise English sentences. Readers outside legal or historical contexts are unlikely to encounter it except in translated Roman-law texts or discussions of treason proceedings.
Easily confused with crimine
'Crime' is the everyday English noun for an unlawful act, whereas 'crimine' is an inflected form of the Latin legal term crimen that survives only in fixed legal-Latin phrases.