atrocity

From Middle French atrocité, from Latin atrox (“terrible, cruel”), from āter (“matte black”)

• enPR: ə-trŏs'ĭ-tē

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atrocity (countable and uncountable, plural atrocities)

1. (uncountable) The quality or state of being atrocious; enormous wickedness; extreme criminality or cruelty.
2. (countable) An extremely cruel act; a horrid act of injustice.
   • 1943, Declaration of the Four Nations on General Security:

     The United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union have received from many quarters evidence of atrocities, massacres and cold-blooded mass executions which are being perpetrated by Hitlerite forces in many of the countries they have overrun and from which they are now being steadily expelled.

• atrocious

• heinousness
• criminality
• brutality

• atrocity in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• atrocity in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• atrocity at OneLook Dictionary Search

• citatory