ultraviolent

U1L1T1R1A1V4I1O1L1E1N1T1

adjective

Extremely violent; of utmost violence.

Scrabble 15

Meanings

adjectiveultraviolent (not comparable)

alternative ultra-violent

  1. not comparableExtremely violent; of utmost violence.

    But today, as I absorb the blunt aesthetic blows of one ultraviolent film after another, all I can make of it is that Hollywood, for reasons of its own, is hopelessly enamored of homicide. The plot is barely there anymore.

    2013, Harper, Harper's Magazine, Harper & Brothers, page 6
    3 more examples

    "The Crow," because of Lee and the crack filmmaking team behind him, succeeds in its bid to translate comic book style to bigscreen ambiance as a sort of ultraviolent "Batman." It's a heavyweight finale to a career of an actor whose potential was just beginning to surface.

    1994, UCLA Daily Bruin, Los Angeles, page 20

    In contrast to the situation in both civil and malignant communities, in turbulent minor communities no individual type has gained the upper hand, so that there is no predominant individual type but instead an admixture of types. Thus ultraviolent people with their unmitigated violent phantom communities, violent people with their mitigated violent phantom communities, and marginally violent people with their nonviolent phantom communities all come to live, work, and play in close physical proximity with one another.

    1997, Lonnie H. Athens, Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 150

    Of course, the game that was ruining workplace productivity and infrastructure wasn’t innocent Tetris or the nationalistic Wolfenstein 3D—it was a game in which an ultraviolent marine gleefully murdered demons on a satanic Mars.

    2021 October 29, Trevor Strunk, “How To Get Away With Making An Ultraviolent Video Game”, in Defector, archived from the original on 22 Feb 2024

Origin

  1. Proto-Indo-European*h₂el-
  2. Latinūls
  3. Latinultrā
  4. Englishultra-
  5. Latinviolentu
  6. Old Frenchviolent
  7. Middle Englishviolent
  8. Englishviolent
  9. Englishultraviolent

From ultra- + violent.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

ultraviolent. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ultraviolent

MLA

“ultraviolent.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ultraviolent. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ultraviolent,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ultraviolent.

Source: ultraviolent on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.