Word.ws English Dictionary

sin eaters

sin eaters is the plural of sin eater.

Meaning of sin eater

Noun

sin eater (plural sin eaters)

  1. (historical) A person (usually a man) who is supposed to take sins of a deceased person upon himself by eating a piece of bread or other food laid on or passed across the breast of the corpse.
    • A Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the corps.1687, John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, page 35

Questions about sin eaters

What is sin eaters the plural of?
Sin eaters is the plural of sin eater.

Words near sin eaters in the dictionary

  1. sin binned
  2. sin binning
  3. sin bins
  4. Sin City
  5. sin eater
  6. sin eaters
  7. sin eating
  8. sin money
  9. sin moneys
  10. sin offering
  11. sin offerings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sin eaters (page history and authors); sin eater (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: “sin eaters.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sin_eaters. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.