heinous

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English hainous, also spelled heynous,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French haineus, also hainos,^[5][6][7][8] meaning hateful and, in Etymonline, also awkward or unpleasant,^[6] now French haineux.^[5][4] In Anglo-Norman the adjective is recorded from about 1136–65, meaning full of hate, hateful and offensive.^[9] The French word is formed from haine (“hatred”), from haïr (“to hate”),^[5][6][7][4] with the suffix that gives English -ous.^[3][7] The verb comes from Frankish *hatjan,^[8][10][4] which is related to hate and to Old Saxon hatōn, Old English hatian and Old High German hazzōn;^[3][4][11] Skeat and Weekley compare Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍄𐌾𐌰𐌽 (hatjan).^[12][13] Etymonline traces the Frankish verb to Proto-Indo-European *kad- (“sorrow, hatred”).^[6] Johnson also considered a Germanic word for shame.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a crime or sin, hateful and atrocious: about 1374 in the OED and about 1385 in Barnhart and the MED, in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde,^[5][3][2] where it occurs once.^[15]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word was used of offences and sins and of the people who commit them, and in the MED also of words and feelings that express hatred.^[5][2] That active sense, full of hate or malicious, is recorded from before 1400, in the alliterative Morte Arthure, to 1586, and is obsolete, as is a weaker sense, grievous or severe, used from about 1541 to 1675.^[5] From 1548 the word was transferred from the crime to the charge, or to the view taken of it.^[5] Johnson (1755) defined it as "atrocious; wicked in a high degree".^[14] In the 19th-century dialects of Cumberland, Yorkshire and Devon it meant large or tremendous, and as an adverb it was an intensifier, "very".^[16] In American campus slang since the 1980s it has meant terrible or ugly, and occasionally, in reverse, fantastic.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1374 – of crimes and sins, hateful, atrocious.^[5]
• before 1400 – full of hate, malicious (obsolete after 1586).^[5]
• c. 1541 – grievous, severe (obsolete after 1675).^[5]
• 1548 – of an accusation or charge.^[5]
• 1986 – US campus slang, terrible, ugly.^[17]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Shockingly evil or wicked; atrocious, especially of a crime: The court called the attack a heinous act.^[18][11][5]
2. (slang, US) Very bad or ugly; terrible.^[17]

Word family

• heinously
• heinousness

Related words

• hate
• hatred

Usage notes

The Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary gives /ˈheɪ.nəs/ and /ˈhiː.nəs/ for British English but only /ˈheɪ.nəs/ for American English,^[19] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged records /ˈhiː-/ and /ˈhaɪ-/ as occasional American variants.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
17. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
18. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
19. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press