Turpitude means wickedness or deeply immoral behavior. It's a serious word that describes actions showing a corrupt or depraved character, deliberate wrongdoing that reveals someone's fundamental lack of moral principles.

When lawyers talk about “moral turpitude,” they mean crimes that reveal someone is fundamentally dishonest or depraved: fraud, theft, perjury, or cruelty. These are deliberate acts that show someone lacks basic moral character. A person convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude might lose their professional license or face deportation because these actions demonstrate they can't be trusted.

You won't hear it in everyday conversation, but you might encounter it in books describing villainous characters or in legal contexts. When Charles Dickens described Ebenezer Scrooge's cold-hearted treatment of Bob Cratchit and refusal to help the poor, he was depicting a kind of turpitude: behavior that revealed a deeply corrupt character.

Turpitude describes actions that make others question whether someone has any moral compass at all, the most serious kind of wrongdoing, far beyond breaking minor rules.