in flagrante delicto

• flagrante delicto
• in flagrante
• in flagrant delict (Anglicized, less common)

Borrowed from Medieval Latin in flagrante delicto (literally “while the crime is blazing”), from in + flāgrō (“burn”) + dēlictō, form of dēlictum (“crime, misdeed”).

• IPA^(key): /ɪn fləˌɡɹæn.teɪ dɪˈlɪk.təʊ/

in flagrante delicto (not comparable)

1. In the act of committing a misdeed.
   • 1908, Baroness Orczy, chapter V, in The Old Man in the Corner‎:

     He would be caught in flagrante delicto, and, with a heavy sentence hovering over him, he would probably be induced to name his accomplice.

2. While performing sexual activity.
   • 1985, Jonathan Lynn, Clue, spoken by Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull):

     We've already established that you were one of Miss Scarlet's clients. That's why you were so desperate to get your hands on those negatives. Photographs of you and Yvette in flagrante delicto, remember?

   • 2002, Adriana Hunter, transl., The Sexual Life of Catherine M., translation of La Vie Sexuelle de Catherine M. by Catherine Millet, page 146:

     I would add to that the fact that, if we are happy to be caught in flagrante delicto in a picturesque setting, there would be something almost humiliating about being caught somewhere as ugly as that.

   • 2015 February 8, Naomi Schaefer Riley, “Columbia mattress rape case is not justice — it’s shaming without proof”, in New York Post‎:

     When his housemates, two men and a woman, found them in flagrante delicto, one reported, “She said she didn’t want us to think of her as ‘that girl.’ ”

   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 65:

     As a student of the fossil record, I can assure you that it’s not often that creatures are transformed, in flagrante delicto, into memento mori.

Also used in abbreviated in flagrante, particularly used of sexual activity, as in “to be caught in flagrante”.

• in the act
• red-handed
• with one's dick in one's hand (vulgar, informal)
• with one's hand in the cookie jar
• with one's pants down

• in flagrante
• in flagrant delict

• misdeed