peccancy

English

Etymology

From post-classical Latin peccantia, from Latin peccāns, present participle of peccō (“to sin”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpɛkənsi/

Noun

peccancy (countable and uncountable, plural peccancies)

1. (countable) A sin or moral transgression.
   • 1648, Walter Montagu, “Of Scurrility”, in Miscellanea Spiritualia‎^[1], London: W. Lee, D. Pakeman, and G. Bedell, section 2, page 144:

     [T]his distorting of equivocall words, which passeth commonly for a triviall peccancy, if it be well examined, will be found a very dangerous admission; for me thinks this may be termed a verbal adultery, as it vitiateth and corrupts the property of another, which would have remained innocent without that sollicitation, and therefore seemeth much a souler fault, than a single incontinency of our own words.

   • 1902, William James, “Lectures XI, XII, and XIII: Saintliness”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 267:

     For it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain away, leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leaning.

2. (uncountable)
   1. Sinfulness.
   2. (rare) A state of being flawed; faultiness.
   3. (obsolete) Unhealthiness.