The Word of the Day

peccadillo \pek-uh-DIL-oh\ noun : a slight offense

Example sentence: Michael's thank-you note to his hostess was sincere and touching; his only peccadillo, however, was addressing her by her first name instead of "Mrs. Buchanan."

Did you know? "The world loves a spice of wickedness." That observation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may explain why people are so willing to forgive peccadilloes as youthful foolishness or lapses of judgment. The willingness to overlook petty faults and minor offenses existed long before English speakers borrowed a modified version of the Spanish "pecadillo" at the end of the 16th century. Spanish speakers distinguished the "pecadillo," or "little sin," from the more serious "pecado," their term for a sin of magnitude. And these Spanish terms can be traced back still further, to the Latin verb "peccare," meaning "to sin."