English

Noun

peccancy ‎(plural peccancies)

1. (rare) Faultiness, a state of being flawed.
2. A sin or moral transgression.
   • 1648, Walter Montagu, “Of Scurrility”, in Miscellanea Spiritualia, London: W. Lee, D. Pakeman, and G. Bedell, 2, page 144:

     ... this distorting of equivocall words, which passeth commonly for a triviall peccancy, if it be well examined, will be found a very dangerous admission; for me thinks this may be termed a verbal adultery, as it vitiateth and corrupts the property of another, which would have remained innocent without that sollicitation, and therefore seemeth much a souler fault, than a single incontinency of our own words.

   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Folio Society 2008, p. 227:

     For it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain away, leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leaning.

3. (uncountable) Sinfulness.
4. (obsolete) Unhealthiness.