<em>Guilt</em> is a noun — the feeling, or the fact of having committed an offence: <em>The guilt kept her awake for weeks.</em> <em>Guilty</em> is the adjective that describes a person or thing: <em>He pleaded guilty on the second charge.</em> One is the thing; the other describes who has it.
The core difference
These are two forms of the same idea, and the choice is grammatical rather than semantic. Guilt names the state; guilty attributes it to someone.
Both carry the same double meaning. There is legal guilt — the established fact that a person committed an offence — and emotional guilt, the uncomfortable feeling of having done wrong. English uses the same pair of words for both, which is why he felt guilty and he was guilty can mean very different things.
How to use each
- guilt (noun): The prosecution failed to prove guilt. / She was drowning in guilt. / a wave of guilt, an admission of guilt.
- guilty (adjective): The jury found him guilty. / I feel guilty about missing the funeral. / a guilty conscience, a guilty look.
The test
If the word sits after a form of be, feel, find or look, or immediately before a noun, use guilty. Otherwise you want the noun, guilt — the form that names the thing itself, and the only one that can serve as the subject or object of a verb (guilt kept her awake, the prosecution proved guilt).
A quick substitution also works: swap in sadness and sad. She was full of sadness → full of guilt. She felt sad → she felt guilty.
The construction to watch
The preposition changes with the form. You are guilty of something: guilty of fraud, guilty of forgetting her birthday. But you feel guilty about something: guilty about the money. Guilty for is common in speech but reads as non-standard in edited writing; use about.
With the noun, the usual pattern is guilt about, guilt over, or a plain possessive: his guilt over the accident.
The common mistake
Two slips recur. The first is using the noun where the adjective belongs — I feel guilt about it is not wrong, but it sounds formal and slightly clinical next to the ordinary I feel guilty about it. The second is the noun compound: it is a guilt trip and guilt-tripping, never a "guilty trip", because there the noun is modifying another noun.
The edge case
In court reporting the words are not interchangeable at all. A verdict is guilty or not guilty; the thing proved or not proved is guilt. And note that a not guilty verdict is a finding about proof, not a declaration of innocence — the jury did not establish guilt is the accurate phrasing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it "I feel guilt" or "I feel guilty"?
Both are grammatical, but "I feel guilty" is what almost everyone writes. "I feel guilt" sounds formal or literary and is more common with a modifier, as in "I feel a real guilt about it".
Is it "guilty of" or "guilty for"?
Guilty of when naming the wrongdoing: guilty of theft. Guilty about when naming what you feel bad over: guilty about the argument. Guilty for is widespread in speech but avoided in edited writing.
Is it a "guilt trip" or a "guilty trip"?
Guilt trip. The noun guilt is modifying the noun trip, so the adjective form has no place there.