not guilty
not guilty noun: a formal plea by a defendant of not being culpable for the crime with which the defendant is charged.
Noun
not guilty (plural not guilties)
- A formal plea by a defendant of not being culpable for the crime with which the defendant is charged.
- If you do not plead, a plea of not guilty will be entered for you.
- A verdict or formal finding by the legal system that a defendant is not culpable for the crime with which the defendant was charged.
- My heart beats through five not guilties. Six, seven, nine, eleven. Seventeen not guilties. The prosecutor's lips curl.2003, D.B.C. Pierre, Vernon God Little, →ISBN, page 238
- Synonyms:
- acquittal, exoneration, quittance, absolution, acquittance, acquitment, assoilment, compurgation, disculpation, exculpation
- A member of a jury or tribunal supporting acquittal, or a vote cast in support of acquittal.
- Two not guilties. Seven for conviction. "I'm a 'not guilty,'" she said.2006, John Lutz, Chill of Night, →ISBN, page 213
- A person who has been acquitted of a crime.
- The not guilties walked out and went to work if they had jobs; the guilties were hauled away to spend maybe thirty days on the county farm growing cabbage.1997, David Brinkley, “June 5, 1983”, in Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion, →ISBN, page 32
Adjective
not guilty
- Of a person, legally innocent of a crime which they have been accused of in a court of law.
- He was found not guilty because there was a reasonable doubt.
- Innocent.
- The jury said he was not guilty. I knew he wouldn't have done something like that.
- Synonyms:
- blameless, offenceless, clean, clean-handed, clean as a hound's tooth, clean as a whistle, clear, dovelike, guiltless, innocent
Synonyms of not guilty
- innocent
- acquittal
- exoneration
- quittance
- compurgation
- disculpation
- exculpation
- vindication
- blameless
- offenceless
24 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- clean
- clean-handed
- clean as a hound's tooth
- clean as a whistle
- clear
- dovelike
- guiltless
- innocent as the babe unborn
- innocent as the child unborn
- irreprehensible
- nonblameworthy
- offenseless
- pure
- righteous
- sinless
- unblameable
- unblameworthy
- uncalculating
- absolution
- acquittance
- acquitment
- assoilment
- sackless
- unguilty
Antonyms
Forms of not guilty
| plural | not guilties |
|---|
Questions about not guilty
- What does not guilty mean?
- Not guilty means a formal plea by a defendant of not being culpable for the crime with which the defendant is charged.
- What part of speech is not guilty?
- Not guilty can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of not guilty?
- The plural of not guilty is not guilties.
Words near not guilty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: not guilty (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: “not guilty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/not_guilty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.