atrocious
pronunciation
How to pronounce atrocious in British English:
UK [əˈtrəʊʃəs]
How to pronounce atrocious in American English:
US [əˈtroʊʃəs]
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- Adjective:
- shockingly brutal or cruel
- exceptionally bad or displeasing
- provoking horror
Word Origin
- atrocious
- atrocious: [17] Traced back to its ultimate source, atrocious meant something not too dissimilar to ‘having a black eye’. Latin āter was ‘black, dark’ (it occurs also in English atrabilious ‘melancholic’ [17] – Greek mélās meant ‘black’), and the stem *-oc-, *-ox meant ‘looking, appearing’ (Latin oculus ‘eye’ and ferox ‘fierce’ – based on ferus ‘wild’, and source of English ferocious – were formed from it, and it goes back to an earlier Indo-European base which also produced Greek ōps ‘eye’ and English eye).Combined, they formed atrox, literally ‘of a dark or threatening appearance’, hence ‘gloomy, cruel’. English borrowed it (in the stem form atrōci-) originally in the sense ‘wantonly cruel’.=> eye, ferocious, inoculate, ocular
- atrocious (adj.)
- 1660s, from stem of Latin atrox "fierce, savage, cruel" (see atrocity) + -ous. Colloquial sense "very bad" is late 19c. Related: Atrociously; atrociousness.
Example
- 1. I was atrocious at being a bar maid .
- 2. The atmosphere at this time , it 's atrocious .
- 3. The personal cost of my chosen career is atrocious .
- 4. They committed the most atrocious cruelties .
- 5. What atrocious handwriting -- it 's virtually indecipherable !