ATROCIOUS • DICTIONARY ONE.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

... convicts underwent, instead of having a penitential influence, only served to harden them in their iniquities; and while they frequently became perfectly callous to the infliction of punishment, they were debased to the incarnation of fiends, merely wanting in the opportunity to perpetrate the most atrocious ...

— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... I laid down my halbert 'twas my duty to assist at the crowning consummation of that disastrous Tragedy. One of the Prime Traitors in the Scottish Risings had been, it is well known, the notorious Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, of Castle Downie, in Scotland, then come to be Eighty years old, and as atrocious an old Villain as ever lived, but so cunning that he cheated the Gallows for three quarters of a century, and died like a Gentleman, by the Axe, at last. He had been mixed up in every plot for the bringing back of King James ever since ...

— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... navvies went doggedly digging on, despite atrocious weather. By May 1st, 1860, the track was sufficiently complete from Oswestry to Pool Quay to be opened for traffic to that point, and advertisements began to appear announcing "cheap trains" for excursionists to the "far-famed and commanding heights of Llanymynech Hills." ...

— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... which Peter bent Russia to his will were base and atrocious; for, although one of the greatest men that have influenced the course of Christian history, he is undoubtedly the worst of them; but he was not working for himself; at Pultawa he told his troops that they ...

— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... of witchcraft. Abominable, unquestionably, the evil was; but justice compels us to add that the remedy of relentless and ruthless persecution with which it was sought to remove the pest was a reign of abhorrent and atrocious cruelty. Into the question itself we dare not enter, lest we should be ourselves bewitched. We know that divination by supposed supernatural agency existed among the Hebrews, that magical incantations were practised among the Greeks and Romans, and that more modern witchcraft has been contemporaneous ...

— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

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