atrocity
Pluralatrocities
- 1An act involving extreme cruelty or appalling injustice.
The massacre was an atrocity that shocked the international community.
Investigators spent years documenting atrocities committed during the civil war.
Similaroutrage, abomination, barbarity, crime, horror
Note
Latin atrox, "terrible, cruel," lies behind the word, and further back āter, a dull matte black. As a countable noun it takes the verbs of wrongdoing: an atrocity is committed, carried out or perpetrated. The plural pairs readily with mass, as in mass atrocities. Use this sense for a deed; for the wickedness itself, turn to the quality of atrociousness.
- 2The quality of being shockingly wicked, cruel, or criminal to an extreme degree.
The full atrocity of the regime's methods emerged only after its collapse.
Witnesses struggled to convey the sheer atrocity of what they had seen.
Similarbrutality, heinousness, atrociousness
Note
Here the word names a quality rather than a deed, so it takes no plural and usually appears as the atrocity of something. Prescott in 1843 writes of an apology devised to cover up a deed's atrocity, and Adam Smith and Trollope use it the same way. Atrociousness and heinousness are close equivalents. If you can count it, you want the cruel act instead.
- 3A thing judged to be extremely ugly or highly undesirable.
The new parking garage is a concrete atrocity that ruins the view of the harbor.
Critics dismissed the sculpture as an atrocity of glass and twisted steel.
Similarabomination
Note
A judgment of taste dressed in the language of crime. Mark Twain calls the accordion "that atrocity," and Edna Ferber's So Big (1924) describes a hanging lamp as "a hideous atrocity in yellow." The exaggeration is the point: it is a mock-outraged word for ugly things, close to abomination. It works best where nobody could mistake it for a real wrong.
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Origin
From Middle French atrocité, from Latin atrōcitātem, based on atrox ("terrible, cruel"), which itself derives from āter ("matte black").