Learn English – “Guilt about” vs. “Guilt over”

grammarprepositions

  • He felt a pang of guilt over lying to her girlfriend.

  • He felt a pang of guilt about lying to her girlfriend.

I saw many texts which contained "guilt over", but when I looked the word "guilt" up, i saw that it comes just with the preposition "about".

What is your explanation on this issue?

Best Answer

The online Oxford Collocation Dictionary suggests that about, at and over are the prepositions used with guilt:

  • (PREP.) ~ about/at/over He had no feelings of guilt over what he had done.

Google Books shows that there are usage instances of guilt over even though they are much less common than guilt about or guilt at.

It appears to be just a less common variant.

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