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What is "vicious"

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vicious
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
vicious
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a vicious campaign (=very unpleasant and designed to attack someone)
▪ The state had conducted a vicious campaign of misinformation and propaganda.
a vicious lie (=one that is very unkind and very untrue)
▪ He told the court that it was a vicious lie from beginning to end.
a vicious/brutal assault
▪ The vicious assault happened outside the man’s home.
a violent/vicious/brutal attack
▪ Police described it as an extremely violent attack.
savage/stinging/vicious/biting satire
▪ a biting satire of the television industry
vicious circle
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ The bargaining processes within the Defence commodity market are often described in the media and in Parliament as vicious inter-Service infighting.
▪ They were regarded as at best degenerate and self-indulgent, and at worst as vicious.
▪ In all his plans, he had never let himself contemplate an outcome as vicious as that.
most
▪ At her most vicious, Horatia would taunt him, calling into question his virility.
▪ Young Dallas matrons tell the most vicious jokes.
▪ Unlike that of the most vicious of television's robotic villains, their aim is environmental salvation for the earth.
▪ But the most vicious attack came from Hammam.
▪ The most vicious can suddenly look very prim when assuming the role of the victim.
■ NOUN
attack
▪ The next morning the Daily Mail launched a vicious attack upon him, injudiciously using false facts as well as offering opinions.
▪ His article drew vicious attacks from people close to the royal family, and his popular television talk show was canceled.
▪ All remembered and periodically still experienced the vicious attacks on them which the Communists were only just beginning to abandon.
▪ Racist attitudes are not simply articulated in the vicious attacks of racist thugs.
▪ Val was becoming increasingly worried by the spate of vicious attacks on horses.
▪ But the most vicious attack came from Hammam.
▪ The parents' defence of their own interests was complicated by a vicious attack on Outram as the archetypal spinster.
circle
▪ This has produced a nastily vicious circle.
▪ I had to destroy, once and for all, the vicious circle of poverty and economic stagnation.
▪ We're all living in a vicious circle.
▪ It has thus become a vicious circle of spoken mumbo jumbo.
▪ The result, in short, was a vicious circle.
▪ And if the auction houses aren't doing well ... it's a vicious circle.
▪ Think of the vicious circle of hyperventilation.
▪ Poor care in turn begat defensiveness and so on, in a vicious circle.
cycle
▪ This vicious cycle is shown in Figure 5.2.
▪ In a vicious cycle, weight gain increases insulin resistance increases weight gain.
▪ Women with bulimia may also be ignorant of how their behaviour perpetuates their symptoms, creating a vicious cycle which traps them.
▪ When you become anxious about sleeplessness, you start a vicious cycle.
▪ A simplified version of the vicious cycle - at its worst - is shown in Figure 1.
▪ The problem evolves into a vicious cycle.
▪ If you make it a chore or a conflict you are already back on the vicious cycle.
▪ As more species of life are slowly added to the embryonic aquarium, the water becomes extremely sensitive to vicious cycles.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ "It was a particularly vicious crime," a police spokesman said.
▪ vicious dogs
▪ a vicious crime
▪ Apparently the girl was the victim of a vicious sex attack.
▪ John gets pretty vicious when he's drunk.
▪ Rottweilers are vicious dogs, far too dangerous to have as pets.
▪ Someone is conducting a vicious campaign of false rumours against the Royal Family.
▪ The Senator launched a vicious attack on the former President.
▪ We found ourselves surrounded by a gang of vicious young thugs, armed with belts, sticks and stones.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Big Willie was the toughest dude on the block, a bad combination of vicious clothes-taking bully and mean, gutsy fighter.
▪ But the old guard in the leadership sends in the tanks and introduces a new phase of vicious repression.
▪ Everybody knew Al was vicious in the courtroom, but they knew he left it in the courtroom.
▪ High tide is often positively dangerous, with vicious dumping waves breaking on the steep slope of the upper beach.
▪ The car roared past, its gun still barking as the car made a vicious turn down Longwood.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Vicious

Vicious \Vi"cious\, a. [OF. vicious, F. vicieux, fr. L. vitiosus, fr. vitium vice. See Vice a fault.]

  1. Characterized by vice or defects; defective; faulty; imperfect.

    Though I perchance am vicious in my guess.
    --Shak.

    The title of these lords was vicious in its origin.
    --Burke.

    A charge against Bentley of vicious reasoning.
    --De Quincey.

  2. Addicted to vice; corrupt in principles or conduct; depraved; wicked; as, vicious children; vicious examples; vicious conduct.

    Who . . . heard this heavy curse, Servant of servants, on his vicious race.
    --Milton.

  3. Wanting purity; foul; bad; noxious; as, vicious air, water, etc.
    --Dryden.

  4. Not correct or pure; corrupt; as, vicious language; vicious idioms.

  5. Not well tamed or broken; given to bad tricks; unruly; refractory; as, a vicious horse.

  6. Bitter; spiteful; malignant. [Colloq.]

    Syn: Corrupt; faulty; wicked; depraved. [1913 Webster] -- Vi"cious*ly, adv. -- Vi"cious*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
vicious

late 14c., "unwholesome, impure, of the nature of vice, wicked, corrupting, pernicious, harmful;" of a text, "erroneous, corrupt," from Anglo-French vicious, Old French vicios "wicked, cunning, underhand; defective, illegal" (Modern French vicieux), from Latin vitiosus (Medieval Latin vicious) "faulty, full of faults, defective, corrupt; wicked, depraved," from vitium "fault" (see vice (n.1)).\n

\nMeaning "inclined to be savage or dangerous" is first recorded 1711 (originally of animals, especially horses); that of "full of spite, bitter, severe" is from 1825. In law, "marred by some inherent fault" (late 14c.), hence also this sense in logic (c.1600), as in vicious circle in reasoning (c.1792, Latin circulus vitiosus), which was given a general sense of "a situation in which action and reaction intensify one another" by 1839. Related: Viciously (mid-14c., "sinfully"); viciousness.

Wiktionary
vicious

a. 1 Pertaining to vice; characterised by immorality or depravity. 2 evil, immoral or depraved. 3 violent, destructive and cruel. 4 savage and aggressive.

Related phrases:
WordNet
vicious

  1. adj. (of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering; "a barbarous crime"; "brutal beatings"; "cruel tortures"; "Stalin's roughshod treatment of the kulaks"; "a savage slap"; "vicious kicks" [syn: barbarous, brutal, cruel, fell, roughshod, savage]

  2. having the nature of vice [syn: depraved, evil]

  3. marked by deep ill will; deliberately harmful; "a malevolent lie"; "poisonous hate...in his eyes"- Ernest Hemingway; "venomous criticism"; "vicious gossip" [syn: poisonous, venomous]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Vicious

Vicious may also refer to:

In music:

  • Sid Vicious (1957–1979), punk rock icon
  • Johnny Vicious, American house DJ, producer and remixer
  • Vicious (rapper), Jamaican-American rapper and reggae artist active in the 1990s
  • Vicious (album), by Nasty Idols
  • Vicious, song by Lou Reed
  • Vicious Vinyl, an Australian record label
  • Vicious, a song by Parkway Drive from Ire

In television:

  • Vicious (TV series), a British television sitcom

In literature:

  • Vicious (novel)

Other uses:

  • Vivian Harris (born 1978), Guyanese professional boxer
  • Vicious, a Cowboy Bebop character
Vicious (album)

Vicious is Nasty Idols third album release after 1991's Cruel Intention. The album was re-released in 2002 as the band's original label (HSM) had gone bankrupt in 1994.

Vicious (rapper)

Quame Riley, better known as Vicious or Li'l Vicious, is a Jamaican-American rapper and reggae artist. He is perhaps best known for his single "Nika," which peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot Rap Singles.

Discovered by Donavon Thomas and Doug E. Fresh at a talent show at the age of 14, "Freaks", a Dancehall tune beat-boxed entirely by Doug E. and vocalized mainly by his protégé, a Brooklyn-born Jamaican teenage newcomer named Vicious. The song received major radio and club play, followed by video play when the video was finally produced a few months into 1994. The latter would soon ink a deal with Sony Music's Epic Records for three years. His debut album, Destination Brooklyn, was released on November 1, 1994. The album charted on three Billboard charts, peaking at number one on the Reggae charts. Its lead single was "Nika," which became his only charting single, reaching number 69 on the Billboard Hot 100 and nine on the Hot Rap Singles chart.

As Li'l Vicious, he also got the distinction of being featured on the "Reggae Soul Mix" of Mariah Carey's " Always Be My Baby" in 1996.

Vicious (TV series)

Vicious is a British television sitcom shown on ITV. The series stars Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi as Freddie and Stuart, an elderly gay couple who have been together for 50 years but endure a love/hate relationship. The series premiered on 29 April 2013 with 5.78 million viewers.

On 14 May 2016, McKellen and Jacobi appeared as Freddie and Stuart during the Eurovision Song Contest where they are seen watching the contest.

Vicious (Lou Reed song)

"Vicious" is a song written by Lou Reed, released as a single in 1973 and originally featured on Transformer, Reed's second post- Velvet Underground solo album.

Vicious (novel)

Vicious is a 2013 novel by V. E. Schwab, focused around two college students who learn how to create superhuman abilities and who later become archenemies.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "vicious".

It was as though there were small, vicious fish inside her, tearing at her vampire flesh, at the atrophied organs that should not have been sensitive to pain.

Yet, although quite practicable, it would be a most morbid and dejected existence, without vitality or even thought, but only paramentation, our chief companions paramental entities of azoic origin more vicious than spiders or weasels.

Some of the mothers in our groups have become so conflicted at the thought of leaving their babies to return to work, they begin a vicious routine of trying to do two jobs without any help.

So untrue is it that we are urged to bestow benefits by our own interest, that even when our benefits prove failures we continue to nurse them and encourage them out of sheer love of benefiting, which has a natural weakness even for what has been ill-bestowed, like that which we feel for our vicious children.

Sachs the street cop with wire thoroughly enjoyed hearing the vicious bigot squeal like a pig as she sprayed him again.

I wonder if David Westin would be so Swiss if someone had asked what he thought about what those vicious white bigots in Texas did to James Byrd, dragging him to his death from the back of a pickup truck?

But the vicious sword took that fear and transformed it, bombarding poor Delly with images of her child being massacred by those same orcs, turning her terror into red rage so completely that she was soon running headlong for the camp.

But even I am forced to admit that they are a ridiculous people, just as one must confess that the British are bungling, the Italians incompetent, the Americans neurotic, the Germans romantically savage, the Arabs vicious, the Russians barbaric, and the Dutch make cheese.

They were rough-looking men, with hard faces and vicious eyes, clad in the bright yellow japons and black cloaklets of the Ardhanese.

He possessed a certain vicious charm that constituted something of an attractant to the ladies and allowed him to get into places and away with things that defeated less animated types like Codd and Johns.

Three years younger than she was, it seemed to me that she could not love me with any idea of mischief, and the consciousness of my own vicious excitement put me out of temper with myself.

I certainly thought it was a bunch of crumby, vicious nonsense at the time.

But I certainly thought it was a bunch of crumby, vicious nonsense at the time.

We still were fighting furiously as we talked in broken sentences, punctured with vicious cuts and thrusts at our swarming enemy.

With the last word he aimed a vicious chop at Dalt, who ducked, spun and dodged out of the way.