contrapasso
contrapasso noun: the concept that the punishment of an individual's soul in Hell corresponds to the sin that person committed on earth.
Noun
contrapasso (uncountable)
- The concept that the punishment of an individual's soul in Hell corresponds to the sin that person committed on earth.
Origin of contrapasso
Coined by Dante in his work Inferno, from contra (“counter”) and passo (“step, pace”).
Questions about contrapasso
- What does contrapasso mean?
- Contrapasso means the concept that the punishment of an individual's soul in Hell corresponds to the sin that person committed on earth.
- What part of speech is contrapasso?
- Contrapasso is a noun.
Words near contrapasso in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: contrapasso (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “contrapasso.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contrapasso. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
