The English word sin descends from an ancient root meaning to be
Trace sin back through Old English and you reach a Proto-Indo-European word for being or truth, carrying the sense of a verdict: truly guilty. Religions then filled the idea very differently. Judaism calls it missing the mark, Shinto treats it as contamination, and several Buddhist teachers say it does not exist.
The modern word comes from Old English synn and further back from a Proto-Germanic form tied to truth and excuse. Its deepest ancestor meant being or true, and linguists read the sense as a judgment that an accused person really was guilty. Old English soth, meaning true, the source of sooth, is a relative. In broad use, any thought, word or deed judged shameful, harmful, selfish or alienating can be called sinful.
The Abrahamic faiths give the concept its heaviest theological weight. Christianity frames sin as disobedience and an offence against God, with doctrines of original sin, redemption through Christ's sacrifice, and a classic list of seven deadly vices. Islam treats it as breaking God's commands and separates minor wrongs from grave ones. Judaism describes it as missing the mark set by divine law and weighs harms against people more heavily than offences against God; atonement usually means repentance and making amends.
Hinduism uses the term papa for deeds or intentions that break moral and spiritual law, generating bad karma and binding a person to samsara, the cycle of rebirth. Its texts rank sins in tiers, from the five greatest, the maha patakas, down to secondary and minor ones.
Buddhism has no deity to defy, so wrongdoing simply produces consequences through karma. Zen writer Brad Warner says the religion has no concept of sin at all, and the Buddha Dharma Education Association rejects original sin outright. Ethnologist Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf offers a middle view: Buddhists do speak of sin, meaning breaches of a universal moral law that operates automatically. Five acts stand apart, including killing one's mother or father and splitting the monastic community, and are said to bring immediate karmic disaster. Shinto sees tsumi as impurity caused by outside forces such as evil spirits, cleansed through purification rites called harae.
Source: Sin
