(BrE) (AmE offense) noun
1 [C] ~ (against sb/sth) an illegal act
SYNCRIME:
a criminal / serious / minor / sexual offence * a first offence (= the first time that sb has been found guilty of a crime) * a capital offence (= one for which sb may be punished by death) * He was not aware that he had committed an offence. * an offence against society / humanity / the state * New legislation makes it an offence to carry guns.
2 [U] the act of upsetting or insulting sb:
I'm sure he meant no offence when he said that. * The photo on the cover of the book may cause offence to some people. * No one will take offence (= feel upset or insulted) if you leave early. * Don't be so quick to take offence.
IDIOMS
no offence (spoken) used to say that you do not mean to upset or insult sb by sth you say or do:
No offence, but I'd really like to be on my own.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for offence is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does offence appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — offence appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
