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Wrongdoing   /rˈɔŋduɪŋ/   Listen
Wrongdoing

noun
1.
Departure from what is ethically acceptable.  Synonym: error.
2.
Activity that transgresses moral or civil law.  Synonyms: actus reus, misconduct, wrongful conduct.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wrongdoing" Quotes from Famous Books



... box on the ear which she received on her return for being out "idling about," instead of lighting the fire for the breakfast. She felt she had deserved much more than that, and she contentedly accepted it as a slight punishment for her wrongdoing. ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... Britain violated international law, and that Americans surrendered none of their rights as neutral citizens in traveling through a war zone on merchant ships of a belligerent power. But Germany was willing to pay an indemnity for the loss of American lives, not as an admission of wrongdoing, but as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... exercise a close watch over the approaches to this canal, and this means we must be thoroughly alive to our interests in the Caribbean Sea." "When we announce a policy... we thereby commit ourselves to the consequences of the policy." "Chronic wrongdoing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... openly acknowledged the fact that it was not a case of deliberate wrongdoing, and he ordered the arrest of the superior young gentleman who had introduced the New York gamblers to their victim; and yet in the eye of the law it was a clear case of embezzlement; and, as Mr. Arnot's friend, the magistrate felt little disposition to prevent things from taking their usual ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... edicts, is clearly a statute: and these are what are called constitutions. Some of these of course are personal, and not to be followed as precedents, since this is not the Emperor's will; for a favour bestowed on individual merit, or a penalty inflicted for individual wrongdoing, or relief given without a precedent, do not go beyond the particular person: though others are general, and bind all ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... decree establishing the war zone was issued, and of course plainly threatened exactly the type of tragedy which has occurred, our Government notified Germany that in the event of any such wrongdoing at the expense of our citizens we would hold the German Government to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... punishment for wrongdoing, the more serious diseases coming from the supreme anito, the lesser ones from the lesser anitos. If smallpox visits a rancheria it is because someone has cut down a tree or killed an animal belonging to a spirit which has invoked the aid of the ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... not wish to discover him, my dear Monsieur Biddulph," was his kind reply. "I happen to know that he has deeply repented of his wrongdoing, and even on his sudden reappearance at Stamford with the remaining portion of his once invulnerable gang, he urged them to turn aside from evil, and become honest citizens. He has, by his wrongful conviction ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... image was there confronting him! Was this the face of Troy's Chief Magistrate? (forgive the blank verse). Were these the features—was this the aspect—from which virtue had so often derived its encouragement and wrongdoing its reproof? Was this the figure the ladies of Troy had been wont to follow with all but idolatrous gaze? Nay, who was this man—unshaven, unkempt, unbewigged, smeared with mud from head to foot, and from scalp to jaw with commingling bloodstains? ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... day after day, the handsome young Paris finally persuaded Helen to leave her husband and home. She got on board of his vessel, and went with him to Troy as his wife. Of course, this wrongdoing could not bring happiness; and not only were they duly punished, but, as you will soon see, the crime of Paris brought suffering and death to his friends ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... to be so still and careless when Rome is at the gates of thy town.' He merely looked with his large eyes at me. Yet the man is not apathetic, but loves old and young, the very brutes and birds and flowers of the field. His only impatience is with wrongdoing, but he ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... epithet, and the thought of the soldiers restrained him from the latter. Some suspected that it was because he wanted the disgracing to be the act of the senate and the people rather than his own, especially since he was in the midst of the legions. He did say that Tarautas by his wrongdoing had been chiefly responsible for the war and had terribly burdened the public treasury by increasing the money given to the barbarians, inasmuch as it was of equal amount with the pay of the soldiers under arms. No one dared, however, to give utterance ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... no way, though, of blotting out in a moment our wrongdoing, our foolishness, our mistakes. They cannot be wiped off, as a sum off a slate, nor the results, nor the memory of them. There is nothing to be done but to face the consequences bravely, to live them down hour by hour; so, profiting by the lesson ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... was a terrible sachem, who, on the principle that has ruled for centuries in China, would put Mul-tal-la to death, even though he was wholly blameless of neglect or wrongdoing. It was agreed that our friends should push on to the westward, and then come back to the Blackfoot settlement, where the Shawanoe and the brothers would spend the winter, resuming their homeward journey with ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... down once more before Judson Eells and his gang. But he had spoken true when he said they would resort to murder to gain possession of their mine, and though he had yielded at last to the lure of strong drink, in her heart she could not blame him too much. It was not by wrongdoing that he had wrecked their high hopes, but by signing a contract long years before without reading what he called the fine print. He was just a boy, after all, in spite of his boasting and his vaunted knowledge of the world; and now in his trouble he had come ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... their own power, which it is at once ludicrous and painful to behold. Nor is there reason to believe that these blots on the escutcheon of a nation, so young and so unembarrassed, are either deeply regretted or will be speedily effaced. We see no reaction of national virtue against national wrongdoing. For the cause of this great Republic is not, as in other countries, dependent upon the will of the one man, or the few men, who are charged with the functions of government, but on the will of the great mass of the people, deliberately and frequently expressed. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... brotherliness of Christianity, but the politeness of the world. He enforced his points with many apt illustrations, and he treated the whole subject with so much fulness and fervour, that he fell into the error of the literary temperament, and almost felt that he had atoned for his wrongdoing by the force with which ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... monsters. All this is launched forth in speeches of singular terseness, eloquence, and vigour; but all this is specious and mischievous perversion of the truth—however admirably in character from Stephanie's lips. Every observer who has looked carefully upon the world is aware that the consequences of wrongdoing by a woman are vastly more pernicious than those of wrongdoing by a man; that society could not exist in decency, if to its already inconvenient coterie of reformed rakes it were to add a legion of reformed wantons; and that it is innate wickedness and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... faintly and slowly, but with an unfaltering voice, "I want you to know one or two things so that if it ever should be my husband's affliction to find out how foolish and undutiful I have been, you can tell them to him. Tell him my wrongdoing was, from first to last, ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... she echoed; "after what I have done in my haste to bring sorrow into the happy home of my niece, nothing could ever be too much trouble for me to attempt. And, besides, I should really like to face that unhappy boy, to reproach him for his wrongdoing. I know his mother, and she is a very good woman. Yes, tell me, Fred, what is ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... the seat under the cut-leaved hornbeam, where Edgar still waited for her to have the pleasure of watching her approach, she was not so much ashamed and oppressed as when he had first found her there. She did not want to run away, and she was losing her fear of wrongdoing. She was beginning instead to feel that delightful sense of dependence on a strong man's love which—pace the third sex born in these odd latter times—is the most exquisite sensation that a woman can know. She was no longer alone—no longer an alien ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... them everywhere. We suffer for their misdeeds;—and, what is worse, we have to see others, weaker and more helpless than ourselves, maltreated, plundered, and beaten by these wretches and villains. Wrongdoing is a great, hard, terrible fact. We must face it. We must have some clear and consistent principles of action with reference to these wrongdoers; or else our wrath and indignation will betray us into the futile attempt to ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... ascend to my God, who enclosed us all in flesh and left us upon earth to prove whether, when here below, we shall live obedient to His ordinances and who also will require of us all, when we depart hence to His presence, an account of our life, since He is Judge of all proud wrongdoing; for the groans of the oppressed become the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... to be said to me, I was received in audience, it appeared that I had been summoned to receive a polite but decided admonition against wounding the susceptibilities of my listeners by expressions which were not "good form," and when I, unconscious of wrongdoing, asked which expression she alluded to, the unfortunate word "beslobber" was alleged; my young hearers were not "'Arriets" for whom such ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... life seemed far removed from the struggle for existence to which our race is subjected. I had come gradually to feel that this new world, at least, had attained the golden age of security, and that fear, hate, and wrongdoing had long since passed away, or had never ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... that there is prompt or general reaction to wrongdoing, either of one or of many. I might illustrate with two cases. In one a rich man perverted a public trust, openly, to his own advantage; and a conspiracy of silence hedged his wrong about. In the other, a youth entered in one winter ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... On the one hand, it creates a record of wrongdoing which has to be faced; on the other, it creates a disease in the moral system and spiritual make-up of a man. This disease creates desires for the evil thing, and so warps and weakens a man's force of resistance that when the temptation is presented, the inward craving asserts itself, and ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... swift conscience that speaks! It is meant to ring an alarm-bell to us, to make us, as the Bible has it, 'flee for refuge to the hope that is set before us.' My imploring question to my young friends now is: 'Have you used that sense of evil and wrongdoing, when it has been aroused in your consciences, to lead you to Jesus Christ, or what ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... character not to feel the strain which rested between her two companions. She knew Aunt Janet through and through, the stern loyalty, the unbending precision of a nature slow to anger, full of love, but more inclined to justice than mercy where wrongdoing was concerned. And Joan—well, she had only known Joan half an hour, but Aunt Janet had been talking of nothing else for the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... Devil acts in all cases only by God's permission, the latter is responsible for all the former's wrongdoing. The principal, and not the agent, must bear the guilt. And this suggests a curious problem. Readers of "Robinson Crusoe" will remember that when Man Friday was undergoing a course of theological instruction, he puzzled his master by ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... after her, she brought evil on her native land; for without her aid Tenoctitlan, or Mexico, as they call it now, had never bowed beneath the yoke of Spain—yes, she forgot her honour in her passion. And what was her reward, what right came to her of her wrongdoing? This was her reward at last: to be given away in marriage to another and a lesser man when her beauty waned, as a worn-out beast is sold to a ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... turning point in the boy's career. He did a good deal of serious thinking throughout the day, and saw and felt his wrongdoing. He became an attentive, obedient pupil, and years after, when grown to manhood, he warmly thanked Mr. Pangborn for having punished him with such severity, frankly adding: "I believe if you hadn't done so I should have ended my career in ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... have her father steal provided she got her piano. How vain she was and self-willed; without any fine moral feeling or proper principle! He would be worse than a fool to give his life to such a woman. If she could drive her father—and such a father—to theft, in what wrongdoing might she not involve her husband? He was warned in time; he would not be guilty of such irreparable folly. He would match her selfishness with prudence. Who could blame him? That was what the hard glitter in her eyes betokened—cold selfishness; and he had thought of her ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... of the day wandering about Paris, for he dared not go home. This man of integrity and honor feared to meet the spotless brow of the woman he had misjudged. We estimate wrongdoing in proportion to the purity of our conscience; the deed which is scarcely a fault in some hearts, takes the proportions of a crime in certain unsullied souls. The slightest stain on the white garment of a virgin makes it a thing ignoble as the rags of a mendicant. Between the two the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... never knew father to say it so impressively before, because Amos had been so bad, people really were afraid of him, and father said if once he got started right, he would go at it just as hard as he had gone at wrongdoing. I suppose I shouldn't have said it about a fox, when there were the Dorkings, and ham, and white wool dresses, and all that, but honestly, I couldn't remember that I cared particularly whether Amos Hurd was redeemed or not; he was always lovely to ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... callous behavior it was sheer wrongdoing to spare the man. "I do not allude to the forgery, though that is bad enough," said Cuthbert, glancing round to see that the door was closed, "but to the murder of your ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... carelessness and stupidity as the reasons for the books being as they are. That's the way I'm going at this thing—by the process of elimination. I'm going to say more! I'm eliminating you as being consciously responsible for any of the wrongdoing in this bank. That's about as far as I've got in the matter of elimination." He thumped his fist on a ledger. "It looks to me as if somebody had started to put something over by mixing these figures and had been tripped before finishing ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... know this is your tackle," the man admitted, without getting angry or excited, as most folks do when taken to task for wrongdoing. ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... is so new that we have been slow to connect it with the poverty and vice all about us? The socialists talk constantly of the relation of economic law to destitution and point out the connection between industrial maladjustment and individual wrongdoing, but certainly the study of social conditions, the obligation to eradicate vice, cannot belong to one political party or to one economic school. It must be recognized as a solemn obligation of existing governments, and society must realize that economic ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... artist was a courtier in speech and manners as well, and this got him into trouble once. He was attentive to the ill-used Princess Caroline,—markedly attentive! A royal commission inquired into his conduct, but absolved him from the charges of wrongdoing. When Lady Grosvenor, who had become Marchioness of Westminster, was an old lady, in 1881, she wrote in a letter to Lord Leveson Gower her recollections of the painter: "His manners were what is called extremely 'polished' (not the fault of the present times). ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... that he was on the point of death. Now he doubted much the transgression which he had done against the fair lady the daughter of his lord, and against her husband also, whereby they were undone, both of them by occasion of his malice. Exceeding ill at ease was he of his wrongdoing, which was so great that he ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... the temple court. It was not for the purpose of doing them harm. It was rather to do them good by driving home to them in some tangible and concrete form, through the skin and flesh of their bodies, what the thick skins of their moral natures were unable to comprehend. The resistance of wrongdoing is not opposed to the law of love. As in community life there is the occasional bully who has sometimes to be knocked down in order that he may have a due appreciation of individual rights and community amenities, so among nations a similar lesson is sometimes necessary ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... saw its photograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as some day or other we may remember a sin which has been built over and covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away from the wall of Infinity, where the wrongdoing ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... her professions of reform were insincere. She never made an honest effort to be an honest woman, she never tried to do the square thing. Yet, like other women of her type, she found all sorts of excuses for her wrongdoing. She pretended that she was persecuted, a victim of circumstances, and was ever ready to explain away the viciousness of character, which was really ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... in my day's work it cometh that I should tell you what ye should do, and what ye should forbear doing, and to that end I am come hither: yet first, if I myself have wronged any man here, let him say wherein my wrongdoing lieth, that I may ask his pardon and ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... could see the angel of the Lord, with his drawn-sword, standing in the way, and barring his further progress in wrongdoing, why might not this horse—who is much more intelligent than an ass—have ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... two other vessels from this city. In the loading of this ship, so great was the dishonesty and deceit on his part that it is understood that your Majesty's exchequer was defrauded of more than a hundred thousand pesos. The governor, in order to wash his hands of this wrongdoing, began suit against them and condemned them to heavy fines and penalties, as he must have informed your Majesty. The case came on appeal to this Audiencia. On account of the said friendship and partiality, the fiscal hushed up this case, as he has others, without discussion ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... became a frightful drunkard, and lost L1,700. He informed me that he used to consume no less than four bottles of whisky a day, and suffered from delirium tremens several times. In the Shelter—I quote his own words—'I gave my heart to God, and after that all desire for drink and wrongdoing' (he had not been immaculate in other ways) 'gradually left me. From 1892 I had been a drunkard. After my conversion, in less than three weeks I ceased to have any desire ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... true, and you know it!" whined Brassy. And now the lads who were listening could see that their fellow-cadet was very much upset. "I'm not guilty, and I never have been guilty of any wrongdoing!" ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... do not dissent," rejoined the astrologer. "It is only the ignorant or the base that makes kismet the excuse for helplessness or for wrongdoing. But as the stars under which a man is born influence that man's acts, then does the reading of the stars guide us as to what the future has ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... of the youth with a faint smile of scorn. He knew how to respect an out-and-out villain; but there was no bottom to a man who would shoot from cover without warning, and then leave a girl to bear the blame of his wrongdoing. "No—I reckon coyote is too big a ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... who were in prosperous circumstances. He did not give their name nor place of residence, for it was unnecessary, but he admitted he had been wayward from early boyhood. He longed for wild adventure, and caused his family grief and anguish by his persistent wrongdoing. Finally, when he had matriculated at Yale, he ran away from home, taking what funds he could steal and fully resolved upon a ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... here, that I should like you to know this. It might explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I had heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took up with the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the seed was sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies had bad homes and mothers, they went wrong in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Provided it is not for wrongdoing, let me die—it matters little. If I myself do die here, and if he does fail to return, as he said he would, what I have done, at least, will be remembered when I am gone—men will tell how I saved my captured master from slavery and from his enemies, restored him, a free ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius



Words linked to "Wrongdoing" :   violation, criminal maintenance, champerty, misdeed, intrusion, falsification, misfeasance, usurpation, infringement, misrepresentation, injustice, brutalization, unfairness, actus reus, evildoing, knavery, brutalisation, civil wrong, activity, trespass, misbehavior, encroachment, injury, malpractice, misbehaviour, infliction, perversion, misconduct, dereliction, malversation, evil, iniquity, dishonesty, evilness, maintenance, transgression, tort, shabbiness, malfeasance, wrongful conduct



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