ENORMITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does enormity mean? 

• ENORMITY (noun)
  The noun ENORMITY has 4 senses:

1. the quality of being outrageous

2. vastness of size or extent

3. the quality of extreme wickedness

4. an act of extreme wickedness

  Familiarity information: ENORMITY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ENORMITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being outrageous

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

enormity; outrageousness

Hypernyms ("enormity" is a kind of...):

indecency (the quality of being indecent)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Vastness of size or extent

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

universities recognized the enormity of their task

Hypernyms ("enormity" is a kind of...):

enormousness; grandness; greatness; immenseness; immensity; sizeableness; vastness; wideness (unusual largeness in size or extent or number)

Domain usage:

colloquialism (a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech)

Derivation:

enormous (extraordinarily large in size or extent or amount or power or degree)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The quality of extreme wickedness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("enormity" is a kind of...):

nefariousness; ugliness; vileness; wickedness (the quality of being wicked)

Sense 4

Meaning:

An act of extreme wickedness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("enormity" is a kind of...):

atrocity; inhumanity (an act of atrocious cruelty)

 Context examples 

I came to you that morning in order to understand the full enormity of my offence.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And even while I was oppressed by the enormity of my sin,—for sin it was,—I chuckled with an insane delight.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose as my dear Charlotte informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points; and she saw, therefore, in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt and infamy.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

All my wrongs and humiliations flashed upon me with a dazzling brightness, all that I had suffered and others had suffered at his hands, all the enormity of the man’s very existence.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Yet she appeared confident in innocence and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands, for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)