ATROCIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does atrocious mean? 

• ATROCIOUS (adjective)
  The adjective ATROCIOUS has 3 senses:

1. shockingly brutal or cruel

2. exceptionally bad or displeasing

3. provoking horror

  Familiarity information: ATROCIOUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ATROCIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Shockingly brutal or cruel

Synonyms:

atrocious; flagitious; grievous; monstrous

Context example:

no excess was too monstrous for them to commit

Similar:

evil (morally bad or wrong)

Derivation:

atrociousness (the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane)

atrocity (an act of atrocious cruelty)

atrocity (the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Exceptionally bad or displeasing

Synonyms:

abominable; atrocious; awful; dreadful; painful; terrible; unspeakable

Context example:

an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room

Similar:

bad (having undesirable or negative qualities)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Provoking horror

Synonyms:

atrocious; frightful; horrible; horrifying; ugly

Context example:

an ugly wound

Similar:

alarming (frightening because of an awareness of danger)

 Context examples 

It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious criminal, I dare say.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

“No doubt,” said Holmes, “he was as you say. I have heard that he was atrocious. But how are you affected?”

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And as for riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

She boxed the ears of the Silvas who crowded about the visitors on the tiny front porch, and in more than usual atrocious English tried to apologize for her appearance.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I had resolved in my own mind that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness, and I banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Villainy is the matter; baseness is the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name of the whole atrocious mass is—HEEP!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I bound myself by the required promise, in a most impassioned manner; called upon Traddles to witness it; and denounced myself as the most atrocious of characters if I ever swerved from it in the least degree.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)