PERPETRATOR

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does perpetrator mean? 

• PERPETRATOR (noun)
  The noun PERPETRATOR has 1 sense:

1. someone who perpetrates wrongdoing

  Familiarity information: PERPETRATOR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERPETRATOR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who perpetrates wrongdoing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

culprit; perpetrator

Hypernyms ("perpetrator" is a kind of...):

offender; wrongdoer (a person who transgresses moral or civil law)

Derivation:

perpetrate (perform an act, usually with a negative connotation)

 Context examples 

Mind, I don't say a crime; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is error.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I looked with interest upon this man, who was accused of being the perpetrator of a crime of violence.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I want the man I love and honor to be something finer and higher than a perpetrator of jokes and doggerel.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

So perfect was the organisation of the society, and so systematic its methods, that there is hardly a case upon record where any man succeeded in braving it with impunity, or in which any of its outrages were traced home to the perpetrators.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)