(informal) vastness of size or extent

Usage examples of enormity.

Hence, while he has endeavored truly to depict--or to let those who made history at the time help him to depict--the enormity of the offence of the armed Rebellion and of the heresies and plottings of certain Southern leaders precipitating it, yet not one word will be found, herein, condemnatory of those who, with manly candor, soldierly courage, and true patriotism, acknowledged that error when the ultimate arbitrament of the sword had decided against them.

He found it difficult to absorb the enormity of it, that he walked with Lord Corbal Xir, one of the most feared men in settled space.

I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln, an insignificant individual like Lincoln,--upon his ipse dixit charging a conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery.

I must again be permitted to remind him that although my ipse dixit may not be as great as his, yet it somewhat reduces the force of his calling my attention to the enormity of my making a like charge against him.

To convict me of my crime she shewed me twenty-five cards, placed in order, and on them she displayed the various enormities of which I had been guilty.

The Treacy sisters stood on top of the Cliffs of Moher, taking in the enormity of the vista before them: a haze of misty-whites, abstract purples and blue vapours that had once been sea and land.

Gavlok and the squires sat in silence, stupefied by the enormity of the disaster, the Mountain Swordsman Radd Falcontop spoke up.

The sails, but vaguely discernible behind the forecastle deck and above the bowsprit, swollen by the raging force of the storm, were bearing back in their enormity, in order to, having gained the crest, righten themselves and then, tilting over the void, speed the vessel on towards new billows.

She left, thinking oddly of the enormity of his hand, and started to make a beeline for the War Department across the street.

I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed, when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders sent to the United States as Missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans despatched to the Islands in a similar capacity.

At this the natives ran scampering through the groves, horror-struck at the enormity of the act.

For the first time he completely understood the enormity of what he had launched them into: the outside, the barbarian world, away from everything civilized, leaving everything worthwhile behind, sonno-joi and Choshu and shishi and family, leaving no wife and sons--ah my brave and so wonderful Sumomo how you are missed, you would have made my leaving easier but now .

Surveying all his fragmentary and hitherto undigested, uncriticized acquaintance with the world of men, he saw that even if he had been clearly conscious of the enormity of slaughter, yet to stand aside would have been wrong.

They have robbed us of our property, they have murdered our citizens while endeavoring to reclaim that property by lawful means, they have set at naught the decrees of the Supreme Court, they have invaded our States and killed our citizens, they have declared their unalterable determination to exclude us altogether from the Territories, they have nullified the laws of Congress, and finally they have capped the mighty pyramid of unfraternal enormities by electing Abraham Lincoln to the Chief Magistracy, on a platform and by a system which indicated nothing but the subjugation of the South and the complete ruin of her social, political and industrial institutions.

He understood the enormity the minute the delivery man arrived at the flat with four unliftable cases.