Perpetrations

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of committing a harmful or illegal deed
2. The performance of an action that causes damage or distress
3. Engaging in a wrongful act, particularly one that inflicts suffering on others

Etymology: "Perpetrations" is the plural of "perpetration", so it simply names more than one instance of the act. The noun "perpetration" is itself a derivative of "perpetrate", which in turn comes from the Latin verb "perpetrare", meaning to carry out or accomplish something, usually something bad. The base is "per-", meaning "through" or "thoroughly", joined to "patrare", meaning to bring about or effect. The sense of "thoroughly carrying through" a deed gradually came to focus on the deed itself, and in English the word has settled firmly on wrongdoing, so a perpetration is almost always a crime or an outrage.

Synonyms: acts, deeds, offenses, crimes, transgressions