culpa

Culpa is a Latin noun meaning fault or blame. In many Romance languages, a cognate term such as culpa (Spanish, Portuguese) or colpa (Italian) carries the sense of fault, guilt, or responsibility. In English, the phrase mea culpa—“my fault”—retains the Latin form to acknowledge personal responsibility.

In legal usage, culpa denotes fault or negligence that can ground liability. In civil-law traditions, liability for harm often rests on culpa, with distinctions such as culpa lata (gross negligence) and culpa levis (slight negligence). The concept also appears in contract and tort contexts, including culpa in contrahendo (fault in the negotiation of a contract) and, more broadly, culpa in performance. In common-law systems, the underlying idea is usually described in terms of negligence, though Latin terms sometimes appear in doctrinal writings or in comparative discussions of liability regimes.

Beyond law, culpa functions as a general notion of responsibility or fault. In everyday language, the Latin expression mea culpa is widely used to admit error or concede responsibility. The term also appears in philosophy, theology, and ethics discussions as a reference point for blame, moral responsibility, and accountability across cultures that use or study Latin-derived legal and scholarly vocabulary.