Atrocious

//əˈtɹəʊ.ʃəs// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Frightful, evil, cruel, or monstrous.

    "Prisons have been the sites of atrocious mistreatment of prisoners."

  2. 2
    Offensive or heinous.

    "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."

  3. 3
    Very bad; abominable, disgusting.

    "Their taste in clothes is just atrocious."

Adjective
  1. 1
    provoking horror wordnet
  2. 2
    exceptionally bad or displeasing wordnet
  3. 3
    shockingly brutal or cruel wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
flagitioushorrifyingunspeakableaberrantabjectabnormal

Example

More examples

"He has atrocious table manners."

Etymology

From Latin atrōx (“cruel, fierce, frightful”) + -ious.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.