You can picture criminal as everything that hangs on a 'crime' — an act the law has marked as an offence. The plainest picture is 'to do with crime': the act, and the person who does it. From that one anchor the word reaches in three directions — to the whole machinery of law and courts that deals with such acts ('criminal law'), to the person themselves (the criminal, the one who did it), and, more loosely, to something so wrong or unfair that it feels like a crime even though no law was broken.
From the word’s history
From Late Latin 'criminalis' ← Latin 'crimen' (a charge, indictment, accusation; then the offence itself). Because the root sits at the point where an act is formally charged before the law, the word naturally covers both the wrongful act ('connected with crime') and the legal apparatus that judges it ('criminal law / criminal court').
源自晚期拉丁文 criminalis ← 拉丁文 crimen（指控、起訴、控告；後來也指罪行本身）。因為字根正好落在「一個行為被正式提到法律面前受控」這個點上，所以這個字自然同時涵蓋了那個違法的行為（跟犯罪有關）以及審理它的那套法律機制（criminal law 刑法、criminal court 刑事法庭）。
etymonline.com/word/criminal; etymonline.com/word/crime
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
criminaladj/ˈkɹɪm.ɪ.nəl/
- 1
Against the law; forbidden by law.
- Foppish and fantastic ornaments are only indications of vice, not criminal in themselves.
- 2
Guilty of breaking the law.
- The neglect of any of the relative duties renders us criminal in the sight of God.
- 3
Of or relating to crime or penal law.
- His long criminal record suggests that he is a dangerous man.
- The officers and servants of the crown, violating the personal liberty, or other right of the subject […] in some cases, were liable to criminal process.
- 4
Abhorrent or very undesirable.
- Printing such asinine opinions is criminal!
- [...] I think it represents exceptional value for money and I think it would be criminal not to go ahead and build it."
criminalnoun/ˈkɹɪm.ɪ.nəl/
- 1
A person who is guilty of a crime, notably breaking the law.
- ‘[…] There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning—he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way—’
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。