enormity

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Deviation from what is normal or standard

   Deviation from what is normal or standard; irregularity, abnormality.

2. 2

   Deviation from moral normality

   Deviation from moral normality; extreme wickedness, nefariousness, or cruelty.

   • Not until the war ended and journalists were able to enter Cambodia did the world really become aware of the enormity of Pol Pot’s oppression.
   • I had an obscure feeling that all was not over, and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past.
   • Hannah Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" in her dispatches for The New Yorker from Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem in 1961. It was her attempt to square the mediocrity of the man with the enormity of his crimes.
3. 3

   A breach of law or morality

   A breach of law or morality; a transgression, an act of evil or wickedness.

   • Monsters of impurity, avaricious wretches, poisoners, have occupied the papal see. A learned bishop (Maret of the General Council) expresses himself with holy indignation in reference to the frightful enormities of the tenth century.
   • In 1650 Lieutenant William Jackson was in trouble for holding, among many other enormities, ‘community of all things’, including, apparently, wives.
4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      Great size

      Great size; enormousness, hugeness, immenseness.

      • But the enormity of Clement's vision of papal grandeur only became clear once the public rooms were completed during the years that immediately followed.

The neighborhood

• synonymoddness
• synonymweirdness
• synonymstrangeness
• synonymdepravity
• synonymimmorality
• synonymvillainy
• neighborenormous
• neighborenormously
• neighborenormousness
• neighbornorm
• neighbornormative
• neighbornormatively
• neighbornormativity