enormity
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪˈnɔːmɪti/
ipa: /ɪˈnoɹmɪti/
ipa: [-ɾi]
Forms: form: enormities
Etymology: From Late Middle English ēnorme (“monstrous or unnatural act; enormity”), from Old French énormité (“enormity”), from Latin ēnormitās (“irregularity; enormity”), from ēnōrmis (“irregular, unusual; enormous, immense”) + -itās (suffix forming nouns indicating states of being). Ēnōrmis is derived from e- (a variant of ex- (prefix meaning ‘out; away’) + nōrma (“norm, standard”) + -is (Latin suffix forming adjectives from nouns).
Senses: glosses: Deviation from what is normal or standard; irregularity, abnormality.
examples: text: 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.
text: 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.
ref: 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume II, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 6:
text: 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.
ref: 2015 June 6, Duncan White, “Boston Marathon bombing: New book ‘Road to a Modern Tragedy’ examines Tsarnaev brothers’ motivation [print version: Behind the mask, page R23]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review), London, archived from the original on 11 Jun 2015:
glosses: Deviation from moral normality; extreme wickedness, nefariousness, or cruelty.
examples: text: Yet she appeared confident in innocence, and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands; for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited, was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed.
ref: 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter VII, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume I, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, pages 161–162:
text: 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.
ref: 1870 July, Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné, “Dr Merle D’Aubigne on the Council and Infallibility”, in The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, volume XIX, number LXXIII, London: James Nisbet & Co., Berners Street; Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, →OCLC, page 591:
text: In 1650 Lieutenant William Jackson was in trouble for holding, among many other enormities, ‘community of all things’, including, apparently, wives.
ref: 1972, Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Folio Society, published 2016, page 93:
glosses: A breach of law or morality; a transgression, an act of evil or wickedness.
examples: text: I am in Amerika! I felt like weeping at the enormity of this fact. Amerika, the fabled, the mythic, the coveted. The knowledge that we had no visas, and therefore would not be allowed to set foot on land, dampened my enthusiasm only a little.
ref: 1997, Magda Denes, Castles Burning: A Child’s Life in War:
text: 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.
ref: 2008, Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile, New York, N.Y.: BlueBridge, →ISBN, page 103:
text: [Wayne] Rooney and his team-mates started ponderously, as if sensing the enormity of the occasion, but once [Paul] Scholes began to link with Ryan Giggs in the middle of the park, the visitors increased the tempo with Sunderland struggling to keep up.
ref: 2012 May 13, Alistair Magowan, “Sunderland 0–1 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 13 Mar 2015:
synonyms: word: ginormity
word: size
word: bigness
word: bulk
word: largeness
word: magnitude
word: scale
glosses: Great size; enormousness, hugeness, immenseness.
Synonyms: sense: deviation from what is normal or standard
word: anomalousness
word: oddness
word: weirdness
word: strangeness
sense: deviation from moral normality
word: atrociousness
word: depravity
word: immorality
word: villainy
sense: a breach of law or morality
word: desecration
sense: a breach of law or morality
word: violation
sense: great size
word: immensity
sense: great size
word: prodigiousness
Related terms: enormous
enormously
enormousness
norm
normative
normatively
normativity