atrocity

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin atrōcitās (“cruelty, fierceness, harshness”),^[2][3][4][5] a noun of quality from atrōx (“fierce, cruel, frightful”),^[2][3] perhaps through the influence of Middle French atrocité,^[4][2] which Merriam-Webster Unabridged, Klein and Skeat give as the direct source.^[6][7][8] Barnhart explains atrōx as originally "having a gloomy face", from the stem of āter (“black, dark”) and a lost noun meaning eye or face;^[4] Etymonline likewise reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *atro-ek-, from *ater- (“fire”) and *okw- (“to see”), hence "of fiery or threatening appearance".^[3] The American Heritage Dictionary places the Latin adjective under the same root.^[9] The adjective atrocious, from the same Latin stem, followed in the 1660s.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Savage enormity, horrible or heinous wickedness: 1534, in Thomas More's Treatice upon the Passion.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The word first named a quality, extreme wickedness or cruelty;^[2][3] Johnson (1755) defined it as "horrible wickedness; excess of wickedness".^[10] From 1641 it was also used for fierceness or sternness, a sense now archaic.^[2][11] The countable sense, an atrocious deed, an act of extreme cruelty, dates from 1793, in a letter of Thomas Jefferson;^[2][3] modern dictionaries apply it especially to cruelty against civilians or prisoners in war.^[12][9] From 1878 the word was used colloquially with no moral weight, for a bad blunder or an offence against taste or manners,^[2] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives an ugly hat as an example of such an atrocity.^[6]

Timeline

• 1534 – great wickedness or cruelty.^[2][4][6]
• 1641 – fierceness, sternness (now archaic).^[2]
• 1793 – an atrocious deed, an act of extreme cruelty.^[2][3]
• 1878 – colloquially, a bad blunder or an offence against good taste.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. An act of extreme cruelty, especially one committed by armed forces against civilians or prisoners in war: The commission documented atrocities in several villages.^{[12][9][6][2]}
2. Extreme wickedness or cruelty; the quality of being atrocious.^{[12][9][6][2]}
3. Something very bad or in very poor taste: That new car park is an architectural atrocity.^[6][9][2]
4. (archaic) Fierceness, sternness.^[2][11]

Related words

• atrocious

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins