Word.ws English Dictionary

nostra culpa

nostra culpa interjection: our fault, due to our error; we are to blame.

Interjection

nostra culpa

  1. (uncommon) Our fault, due to our error; we are to blame.
    • The exponents of guilt routinely exempt themselves from their accusations; they do not speak of mea culpa but of nostra culpa, or rather vestra culpa.1984, P[eter] T[homas] Bauer, “Ecclesiastical Economics: Envy Legitimized”, in Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development, Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press...
    • […] ‘vostra culpa’ – ‘nostra culpa’ – that we did not see what was right in front […]2002 March 12, David L. Wright, “It is a rare gift”, in The Western Star, Corner Brook, Nfld., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6

Noun

nostra culpa (plural nostra culpas)

  1. (uncommon) An instance of nostra culpa; an apology on behalf of a group.
    • Ours is one of the “leftist and liberal Catholic publications (who) beat their breasts with an editorial nostra culpa whenever Red gains ate chalked up anywhere in the world.” She [Gretta Palmer] inserted a parenthetical remark in the above sentence: “(or, staring fiercely at the Hierarchy, an even...1951 April, Ed Willock, “Reform and Conversion”, in Edward Willock, Carol Jackson, editors, Integrity, volume 5, number 7, New York, N.Y.: Integrity Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 31
    • What we need as much as anything now are mea culpas from politicians who devised and facilitated this fiasco, and journalists who justified and excused it. […] I don't mean vostra culpas, nostra culpas, or even sua culpas, of the sort that the Richard Cohens and Tom Friedmans have tried to fob off...2006 May 28, smintheus [pseudonym], “Memorial Day, a time for mea culpas”, in Daily Kos, Berkeley, Calif.: Kos Media, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 Feb 2026

Forms of nostra culpa

pluralnostra culpas

Origin of nostra culpa

Learned borrowing from the Latin phrase nostrā culpā (“through our fault”), ablative case of nostra culpa (“our fault, guilt”), used in English by analogy with mea culpa.

Questions about nostra culpa

What does nostra culpa mean?
Nostra culpa means our fault, due to our error; we are to blame.
What part of speech is nostra culpa?
Nostra culpa can be an interjection or a noun.

Words near nostra culpa in the dictionary

  1. nostopeptolide
  2. nostophobia
  3. nostos
  4. nostoxanthin
  5. nostra
  6. nostra culpa
  7. nostra culpas
  8. nostra remedia
  9. nostra sponte
  10. Nostradamian
  11. Nostradamic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nostra culpa (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.

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Cite this entry: “nostra culpa.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nostra_culpa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.