(criminal law) an act punishable by law; usually considered an evil act
"a long record of crimes"
A specific act committed in violation of the law.
"The detective spent hours reviewing surveillance footage to identify who committed the crime at the museum."
In plain English: A crime is an act that breaks the law and can lead to punishment.
"The police investigated the crime scene carefully after the robbery."
Usage: Use "crime" to refer specifically to an illegal act that violates the law and may result in punishment. Do not use it as a synonym for general wrongdoing or misbehavior unless that behavior is explicitly defined by legal statutes.
To subject to disciplinary punishment.
"The coach decided to commit a crime against his star player by sending him off the field for missing practice."
In plain English: To commit a crime is to break the law by doing something illegal.
"The new law does not allow anyone to crime against public safety."
Usage: The verb form of crime is archaic and rarely used in modern English; instead, use the noun crime to describe an illegal act or the verb commit to indicate that someone has done something wrong. When referring to disciplinary punishment, it is better to say that an authority "punished" or "disciplined" a person rather than trying to force the obsolete usage of crime as a verb.
A particular security exploit against secret Web cookies over connections using the HTTPS and SPDY protocols that also use data compression. It relies on observing the change in size of the compressed ciphertext for various inputs.
"The security team patched a critical flaw where attackers exploited variations in compressed HTTPS traffic to steal user session cookies without ever decrypting the connection."
The word crime entered English from the Old French crime, which originally meant "charge" or "accusation." It replaced the native Old English term firen to describe an unlawful act.