MONSTROSITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does monstrosity mean? 

• MONSTROSITY (noun)
  The noun MONSTROSITY has 2 senses:

1. a person or animal that is markedly unusual or deformed

2. something hideous or frightful

  Familiarity information: MONSTROSITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MONSTROSITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person or animal that is markedly unusual or deformed

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

freak; lusus naturae; monster; monstrosity

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

mutant; mutation; sport; variation ((biology) an organism that has characteristics resulting from chromosomal alteration)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "monstrosity"):

leviathan (the largest or most massive thing of its kind)

Derivation:

monstrous (distorted and unnatural in shape or size; abnormal and hideous)

monstrous (abnormally large)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Something hideous or frightful

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Context example:

they regarded the atom bomb as a monstrosity

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

malformation; miscreation (something abnormal or anomalous)

Derivation:

monstrous (shockingly brutal or cruel)

 Context examples 

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

His audacities of phrase struck him as grotesque, his felicities of expression were monstrosities, and everything was absurd, unreal, and impossible.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Her monstrosities in the way of cattle would have taken prizes at an agricultural fair, and the perilous pitching of her vessels would have produced seasickness in the most nautical observer, if the utter disregard to all known rules of shipbuilding and rigging had not convulsed him with laughter at the first glance.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He was a man and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing of fear as ever gibbered in the visions of a maddened brain.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

He drew up lists of the most incongruous things and was unhappy until he succeeded in establishing kinship between them all—kinship between love, poetry, earthquake, fire, rattlesnakes, rainbows, precious gems, monstrosities, sunsets, the roaring of lions, illuminating gas, cannibalism, beauty, murder, lovers, fulcrums, and tobacco.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)