Other forms: atrocities
An atrocity is an act of shocking cruelty. Commit an atrocity, wartime atrocities, an atrocity against civilians.
It is reserved for the deliberate and the large: a single killing is a murder and an atrocity is something worse in scale or in kind. The Latin behind it comes from a word meaning matte black, by way of terrible and cruel.
1nounatrocityAn act of shocking cruelty.
“The massacre of the villagers was one of the worst atrocities of the war.”
atrocity is an act.
Latin atrocitas comes from atrox, terrible or cruel, from ater, matte black.
Latin
atrōcitās
Middle French
atrocité
English, today
atrocity
Built from
From Middle French atrocité, from Latin atrōcitās, from atrōx (“terrible, cruel”) + -tās, from āter (“matte black”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA