atrocity

plural atrocities

1. countableAn extremely cruel act; a horrid act of injustice.

   to carry out / commit / perpetrate an atrocity

   5 more examples

   The regime is guilty of mass atrocities including forced displacement and the use of chemical weapons.

   […] it seemed an atrocity or cruelty to Narses a good General, to take punishment of innoxious Hostages:

   1662, William Pynchon, The Covenant of Nature Made with Adam, London, Chapter 11, Section 3, p. 277

   It was impossible for the convention to suffer the crimes they had committed, and the still greater atrocities which they had meditated, to pass unnoticed.

   1795, Helen Maria Williams, Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France, London: G. G. and J. Robinson, Letter 4, p. 61

   This devilish outrage, this fiendish murder, produced, as it was well calculated to do, a tremendous sensation. […] The atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out, in reprobation of it;

   1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 8, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC, part I (Life as a Slave), page 123

   “Any delay in arresting the assassin,” I observed, “might give him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity.”

   1887, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 7, in A Study in Scarlet, New York and London: Street & Smith, page 87

   Synonyms: depravity, outrage, turpitude

2. uncountableThe quality or state of being atrocious; enormous wickedness; extreme criminality or cruelty.

   an apology devised after the commission of the deed, to cover up its atrocity

   1843, William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, New York: Harper, Volume 2, Book 4, Chapter 8, p. 284

   4 more examples

   1553, John Bradford, letter, in Miles Coverdale (ed.), Certain Most Godly, Fruitful, and Comfortable letters, London: John Day, 1564, pp. 481-482, Thys wil I muse on, & way with my self, [tha]t I may dulye knowe, both in me and in al other things, the atrocitie and bitternesse of synne which dwelleth in me, & so may the more hartely geue ouer my self wholy to [th]e lord Christ my Sauiour,

   What character is so detestable as that of one who takes pleasure to sow dissention among friends, and to turn their most tender love into mortal hatred? Yet wherein does the atrocity of this so much abhorred injury consist? […] It is in depriving them of that friendship itself, in robbing them of each others affections […]

   1759, Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, London: A. Millar, Part 1, Section 3, Chapter 4, p. 81

   Here was one who had spent his life in lying to the world, and who was in his very heart shocked at the atrocity of a man who had lied to him!

   1873 May 1 – December 22 (date written), Anthony Trollope, chapter 68, in The Way We Live Now. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published June 1875, →OCLC

   Hernandez […] had been an inoffensive, small ranchero, kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home during one of the civil wars, and forced to serve in the army.

   1904, Joseph Conrad, Nostromo, New York: Harper, Part 1, Chapter 8, p. 119

   Synonyms: atrociousness, brutality, heinousness, enormity

3. countableAn object considered to be extremely unattractive or undesirable.

   [S]ome of the printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accordeon—[…]

   1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XLIII, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, page 300

   1 more example

   The Pools had given them a “hanging lamp,” coveted by the farmer’s wife; a hideous atrocity in yellow, with pink roses on its shade and prisms dangling and tinkling all around the edge.

   1924, Edna Ferber, chapter 7, in So Big, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, page 114

   Synonyms: abomination