Scienter is a legal term that refers to intent or knowledge of wrongdoing. This means that an offending party has knowledge of the "wrongness" of an act or event prior to committing it. For example, if a man sells a car with brakes that do not work to his friend, but the seller does not know about the brake problem, then the seller has no scienter. If he sells the car and knew of the problem before he sold the car, he has scienter. The word has the same root as science, the Latin scienter (knowingly), from scire (to know; to separate one thing from another).