Home UK English besetting sin

Meaning of besetting sin in English:

besetting sin

phrase

  • A fault to which a person or institution is especially prone.

    ‘there was a danger of the country reverting to its besetting sin of complacency’
    • ‘Condoned truancy and absence is one of the besetting sins of the education service.’
    • ‘In her book, the author says: ‘Pride is the besetting sin of the anorexic: pride in her self-denial, in her thin body, in her superiority.’
    • ‘The author asserts that they have difficulty in dealing with temptations and besetting sins because ‘they are both at peace in the world and divided among themselves’.’
    • ‘Wrath is, as regular readers know, one of my besetting sins.’
    • ‘Today they are more conscious of failures, habits and besetting sins which cause enormous guilt.’
    • ‘Nevertheless it is necessary to watch for his besetting sins, and correct them whenever they occur.’
    • ‘They sometimes give way to inconsistencies and besetting sins, and lose their sense of pardon.’
    • ‘The besetting sin of local government elected councillors is that they begin to develop a kind of mini-megalomania - an obsession with their own importance as the lowest of the low of elected representatives.’
    • ‘Yet it's the besetting sin of the professional class to render itself invisible in its own calculations.’
    • ‘He has a piece in today's Washington Post in which he argues that the besetting sin of today's journalists is arrogance.’
    • ‘Yet Paul's besetting sin is apparently covetousness.’
    • ‘His theory is that the Party's besetting sin over the past few decades has been snobbery.’
    • ‘Such behaviour is the besetting sin of psychology and renders science in the field concerned impossible.’
    • ‘To subject a decision of the court or tribunal below to too narrow a textual analysis is a besetting sin for the appellate court.’
    • ‘This was one of the besetting sins of the Pharisees.’
    • ‘The besetting sins of oppressed people may include self-denial, passivity and complicity in their own oppression.’
    persistent, constant, recurrent, recurring