ATROCIOUS • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Atrocious

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/ətrˈoʊʃəs/ Listen

adjective

Atrocious adj.

Extremely heinous; full of enormous wickedness; as, atrocious guilt or deeds.

Characterized by, or expressing, great atrocity. "Revelations... so atrocious that nothing in history approaches them."

Very grievous or violent; terrible; as, atrocious distempers. (Obs.)

Synonyms: Atrocious, Flagitious, Flagrant. Flagitious points to an act as grossly wicked and vile; as, a flagitious proposal. Flagrant marks the vivid impression made upon the mind by something strikingly wrong or erroneous; as, a flagrant misrepresentation; a flagrant violation of duty. Atrocious represents the act as springing from a violent and savage spirit. If Lord Chatham, instead of saying "the atrocious crime of being a young man," had used either of the other two words, his irony would have lost all its point, in his celebrated reply to Sir Robert Walpole, as reported by Dr. Johnson.

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Etymology of 'Atrocious'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Atrocious" Quotes from Famous Books

... level space on the planet which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most of Dara would have liked to see him killed in a manner as atrocious as his crime, but no conceivable death would ...

— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... creature hidden inside was clearing its throat to prevent itself from choking; after a few seconds of this, a voice, so thin and whispering that it seemed impossible that it should ever have come from a person who owned a chest, commenced to sing with an atrocious perversion of the vowels, ...

— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... knew what to do or say at this atrocious proposal. "If you roast it alive," he cried, "you deserve to be all scorched up with lightning. Take care what you do! Spare the child's life! I will have no victim. Beware ...

— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... 14th.—We have dreadful news respecting the fate of some of our captured friends. It is an atrocious crime, and, not for vengeance, but for future security, ought ...

— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... names of "leaders"). The sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant were Time and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other, which he had outraged and stirred up in the human breast. The most atrocious party of the Revolution, the followers of Hebert, gone to his last account, the butcher-atheists, who, in desecrating heaven and earth, still arrogated inviolable sanctity to themselves, were equally enraged at ...

— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

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