heinous
adj/ˈheɪnəs/UK
Etymology
From Middle English hainous, from Old French haïneus (compare French haineux) from haïr (“to hate”), hadir (“to hate”) (compare Old French en-hadir (“to become filled with hate”)), from Frankish *hattjan (“to hate”) (compare Middle English hetien). More at hate. The fluctuation between pronunciations with /eɪ/ and /iː/ is old; the former reflects adoption of an unmonophthongised pronunciation of Old French -ai-, while the latter reflects a monophthongised form.
Definitions
Totally reprehensible.
- I hope they catch the person responsible for that heinous crime.
- The perpetrators of this heinous act must be brought to justice.
- Perhaps burdened by the weight of history, talk of the heinous 2-2 draw in 2002, or the magnitude of the fixture, Scotland seemed spooked in the early throes.
Bad, evil or villainous.
The neighborhood
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for heinous. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA