From Oxford dictionary :
He was careful not to say anything that might incriminate the others.
Should it not be "He was careful not to say anything that might incriminate others"? If the sentence in the dictionary is correct, what does "the" signify here?
If you are a non-native speaker, you perhaps need to make yourself more familiar with the use of the English definite and indefinite articles. Briefly, the significance of the in the sentence is that it limits others to those that have already been mentioned earlier in the conversation or narrative.
To me, it suggests that the speaker is a member of some group, and the article the implies that he didn't say anything to incriminate those in the rest of the group.
Omitting the article would make the sentence mean he was careful not to incriminate anyone. But when you say the others, it refers to some subset of people.
What group? It could be a gang of theives, a corporate board, members of a political party, members of his family, cosuspects in a case, codefendents in a lawsuit. The sentence only provides a pronoun – so, nobody knows what group it is! However, I'm confident that, with more information (who was talking, the nature of the questioning, etc.), I could figure it out.
For example, if the person was Lance Armstrong, and the sentence was uttered this week, I would surmise that the others might refer to fellow cyclists, probably on his team.
