vostra culpa

1. alternativeAlternative form of vestra culpa.

   […] ‘vostra culpa’ – ‘nostra culpa’ – that we did not see what was right in front […]

   2002 March 12, David L. Wright, “It is a rare gift”, in The Western Star, Corner Brook, Nfld., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 6

   3 more examples

   Sir, — I plead “guilty” but so should you. The “Encyclopedia Britannica” does give information on “marmalade” as being related to “quince jelly”. (Vol. 14, 1942 ed.) It also offers a recipe for making the modern “orange-marmalade”. “Mea culpa . . . vostra culpa”.

   1950 April 12, Fred de Vos, “[Letters to the Editor] Marmalade Turns Out to Be Well Connected”, in The Montreal Daily Star, final edition, volume LXXXII, number 85, Montreal, Que.: Montreal Star Company, →OCLC, page 10, column 5

   Mickey Kaus’s TRB (“Who’s Sorry Now,” May 1) says more about himself than about Robert McNamara. Even George McGovern has said he saw contrition and regret in McNamara’s book [In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam].

   1995 May 29, William R. Brown, “[Correspondence] Vostra culpa”, in Martin Peretz, editor, The New Republic […], volume 212, number 22 (4,193 overall), Washington, D.C.: The New Republic, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4, column 2

   The process of proliferation of attitudes characterized by “outer directed-ness” has been associated with the parallel process of the wilting of individual guilt—the core of Christianity. […] Mea culpa has been progressively replaced first by vostra culpa that, some time after World War II, gave way to nostra culpa. Mea culpa has been marginalized and has progressively gone out of fashion.

   2005, Stan Haski, “Consequences of New Freedom”, in The Arrogance of Distance: Moral Hazard and the Rise and Decay of Individual Freedom and Responsibility, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN

plural vostra culpas

1. alternativeAlternative form of vestra culpa.

   In a fire-breathing vostra culpa published in 2006, [Doug] Bandow insisted that everyone is compromised somehow, that every think tank and foundation has an agenda.

   2008, Thomas Frank, “Win-Win Corruption”, in The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Books, →ISBN, part II (Saboteurs), page 240

   2 more examples

   One Trick Pony (at the Uptown), a film written by and starring Paul Simon, […] is another in the Feel Sorry For The Suffering Arist genre that was recently given a new lease on life by Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz: would that the lease had expired after that one movie. Instead, in rapid succession, we’ve been given Honeysuckle Rose, Woody Allen’s vostra culpa Stardust Memories, and now (the order is, coincidentally, descending) this interminible indulgence from Simon, in which the demands of commercial radio are hopelessly at odds with the music his integrity wants to make.

   1980 October 6, Jay Scott, “Treats hard to find in One Trick Pony^([sic])”, in The Globe and Mail, metro edition, 137th year, number 40,820, Toronto, Ont., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 15, column 1

   What we need as much as anything now are mea culpas from politicians who devised and facilitated this fiasco, and journalists who justified and excused it. […] I don't mean vostra culpas, nostra culpas, or even sua culpas, of the sort that the Richard Cohens and Tom Friedmans have tried to fob off on the world, […] I mean a frank admission of fault from everybody who bears some of the blame, offered with the humility owed by those who have harmed their country.

   2006 May 28, smintheus [pseudonym], “Memorial Day, a time for mea culpas”, in Daily Kos, Berkeley, Calif.: Kos Media, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 Feb 2026