How to Use original sin in a Sentence

original sin

noun
  • To admit the South’s original sin is not to bash the South.
    Bill Daley, chicagotribune.com, 28 Feb. 2018
  • Adultery is not a very original sin, even in the White House.
    Joseph Epstein, WSJ, 26 Dec. 2018
  • At the center of this web is slavery, the original sin.
    Judy Berman, Time, 28 May 2021
  • That choice, the original sin, is why our parents were thrown out of paradise.
    Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The New Yorker, 18 Jan. 2021
  • The original sin was the decision to support the French rulers in Vietnam.
    New York Times, 9 June 2021
  • Or was there an original sin in Buckler’s drawing of a boundary around Boerum Hill in the first place?
    Jonathan Lethem, The New Yorker, 21 Aug. 2023
  • Sforno argues that the confession is not directly linked to the tithe process, but rather with the original sin of the golden calf.
    Rabbi Avi Weiss, sun-sentinel.com, 31 Aug. 2020
  • As for Bloom, her original sin was asking Roth to marry her.
    Laura Marsh, The New Republic, 22 Mar. 2021
  • The whole idea of a convent is about creating a guilt-free space; a small paradise where the original sin doesn’t exist.
    Marta Balaga, Variety, 25 Sep. 2021
  • After all, when a show is called Original Sin, that points to ... an original sin.
    Samantha Highfill, EW.com, 13 May 2022
  • Seforno argues that the confession is not directly linked to the tithe process, but rather with the original sin of the golden calf.
    Rabbi Avi Weiss, Jewish Journal, 5 Sep. 2017
  • The signs seemed to remind visitors to bend down and retie their shoelaces, perhaps to gather a promising souvenir or two of the original sin in the process.
    New York Times, 3 Aug. 2021
  • It’s past time to connect the dots of America’s original sin to the black resistance of today.
    Darcel Rockett, chicagotribune.com, 20 Aug. 2019
  • Both the university and the public thought was his original sin.
    Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press, 29 June 2018
  • At Andreadamo, the southern Italian designer challenged the myth of Eve as the bringer of original sin.
    Colleen Barry, ajc, 25 Feb. 2023
  • Our societies did not begin that way, and that is our original sin.
    Sahil Handa, National Review, 13 June 2019
  • This country isn’t trying to atone for the original sin of slavery because it’s being overrun by racists yelling slurs in the streets.
    Los Angeles Times, 5 June 2020
  • His medium, his material, is human frailty, the near end of original sin, and the tools of his trade are the glad hand, the scratched back, the padded envelope, the cut corner, and the jumped line.
    James Parker, The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2017
  • For years we've been told that the original sin of the Affordable Care Act was that it was procedurally flawed.
    Alaska Dispatch News, 26 Sep. 2017
  • The American South is the home of America’s original sin.
    David French, National Review, 11 July 2019
  • For Catholics, baptism is connected with huge concepts, including original sin and the fate of the soul.
    Washington Post, 8 Nov. 2020
  • But the company’s original sin was to borrow against its own FTT token, which was held up by nothing but air.
    Andy Kessler, WSJ, 27 Nov. 2022
  • As a once-Catholic, the Protestant emphasis on original sin baffles me.
    Cyrena Touros, Harper's BAZAAR, 28 Mar. 2021
  • For privilege is a static state into which you are born, stained by original sin.
    Lionel Shriver, Harper's magazine, 25 Nov. 2019
  • The original sin here is that the Tories insist on treating trade as a Brexit bargaining chip.
    The Editorial Board, WSJ, 12 Oct. 2017
  • That, of course, was not the whole truth; America’s original sin of slavery would cast a terrible shadow.
    Roger Cohen, New York Times, 18 Dec. 2017
  • Ozymandias, did penance for his original sin, saving the world by killing millions.
    Brian Lowry, CNN, 15 Dec. 2019
  • To the people of the region, those neocolonial dictates have acquired a mythic status as a kind of original sin.
    Robert F. Worth, The New York Review of Books, 22 Sep. 2020
  • Genestoux has been hard at work trying to redeem this original sin with a service called Unlock.
    Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 6 Oct. 2022
  • The new 1776 hinges on the losing struggle to include an anti-slavery passage in the document; thus was the original sin of the nation ignored at the founding.
    Christopher Barnard, Town & Country, 24 Feb. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'original sin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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