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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
atrocity
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
commit an atrocity (=commit a terrible and violent act)
▪ During the civil war both sides committed numerous atrocities.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
ill
▪ Its members have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities during the Troubles and bitterly oppose any decommissioning.
▪ There have undoubtedly been worse atrocities in areas where no one can go.
▪ Scores more were seriously injured as the blast scattered human remains across stalls in one of Bosnia's worst atrocities.
▪ The inquest has opened into Northern Ireland's worst atrocity, the 1998 Omagh bombing that killed 29 people.
■ VERB
commit
▪ The monster after committing this atrocity felt upset.
▪ Clan Campbell. rightly, have stood condemned for 300 years for having committed the atrocity.
▪ The interest is simply focused on the few individuals who commit several serious atrocities.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The brutal destruction of an entire village was one of the worst atrocities of the Vietnam war.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Any atrocity, at any time, was expected from them.
▪ It was not until half a century later in the 1990s that these atrocities came to light and created an international scandal.
▪ It was, said Stephen, as appalling an atrocity as you could find.
▪ Now senior officers fear the organisation is limbering up for a wave of further atrocities.
▪ That done, we piously concocted the Nuremberg code to ensure that such atrocities would never be repeated.
▪ You re left with a vision of atrocity perpetuating atrocity.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Atrocity

Atrocity \A*troc"i*ty\, n.; pl. Atrocities. [F. atrocit['e], L. atrocitas, fr. atrox, atrocis, cruel.]

  1. Enormous wickedness; extreme heinousness or cruelty.

  2. An atrocious or extremely cruel deed.

    The atrocities which attend a victory.
    --Macaulay.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
atrocity

1530s, from Middle French atrocité or directly from Latin atrocitatem (nominative atrocitas) "cruelty, fierceness, harshness," noun of quality from atrox "fierce, cruel, frightful," from PIE *atro-ek-, from root *ater- "fire" (see atrium) + *okw- "see" (see eye (n.)); thus "of fiery or threatening appearance." The meaning "an atrocious deed" is from 1793.

Wiktionary
atrocity

n. 1 (context uncountable English) The quality or state of being atrocious; enormous wickedness; extreme criminality or cruelty. 2 (context countable English) An extremely cruel act; a horrid act of injustice.

WordNet
atrocity
  1. n. the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane [syn: atrociousness, barbarity, barbarousness, heinousness]

  2. an act of atrocious cruelty [syn: inhumanity]

Wikipedia
Atrocity

Atrocity or Atrocities or Atrocious may refer to:

  • Atrocity (band), a German metal band
  • Atrocities (album), the fourth album by Christian Death
  • Atrocious (film), a 2010 Spanish film
Atrocity (band)

Atrocity is a German heavy metal band from Ludwigsburg that formed in 1985.

Usage examples of "atrocity".

She looked longingly at the soda-can atrocity on my wrist, all curling jangles of some lightweight alloy bendable as warm wax.

The bigger problem was that dragging Caamas back into the light again was going to dredge up memories of a thousand other atrocities that had been inflicted by one group or another over the years.

Bothans to escape proper punishment will merely encourage further atrocities like Caamas in the future.

No, as a parting favor, I shall reveal only your master atrocity, which is this: that you have the brazen effrontery to imagine that your throaty warble should be called singing, and that your caterwauling on the lyre and your sins on the cithara pass, in any sense, for art.

And yet, when I thought about it on that calm walk through the woods in the autumn sunshine, there seemed no real danger of Dunster leaving the battlefield crowing with victorious delight and Cris being convicted of an atrocity.

The squadcar that had panicked me was on quite another errand, what looked like a faggot tiff or atrocity on Gay Street.

Hadriax el Fex has broken with Mornhavon, wants to see the atrocities ended.

A contrary pancake surely, a fingerish atrocity but not without a queer charm all its own.

The ginks presented us with copies of the humane atrocity clause of the Cape Town Accords.

I stretched my arm towards the icy hand, seizing it to make certain of the fact in all its atrocity, and wishing to get up, I rose upon my left elbow, and found that I had got hold of my other hand.

On the other hand, she could not imagine that a man like Juvenal Urbino would be capable of such an atrocity.

From this point on, the former supreme commander began to be purged from memory, much as wartime atrocities had been purged.

A hundred of these wretches who have libeled liberty by perpetrating crimes in her name must be effectually prevented from renewing their atrocities.

With practiced skill the Mull fended off such importunities or appointed a study commission, which invariably reported the Treaty lands to be havens of peace compared to the Retent, where the independent tribes conducted feuds, raids, assassinations, retaliations, outrages, massacres, atrocities and ambushes.

She thinks you forget about atrocities unless the Rightists commit them.