- 1糟透的、極差的（說品質、天氣、表現）；較文的用法也可指殘忍的
Atrocious means extremely bad — so bad that 'bad' feels too small. People say atrocious weather, an atrocious meal, atrocious spelling, an atrocious film. In that everyday use it is informal and a little dramatic; you are not being polite. The older, heavier sense is 'very cruel,' and that sense is still alive in careful writing. When someone says atrocious crimes, they usually mean cruelty, not a poorly cooked dinner. Reviews and complaints use the 'really awful quality' sense most. Though actually, because the cruel sense never quite left, the word can land harder than terrible if the listener hears the old meaning too.
From the word’s history
From Latin atrox 'cruel, fierce, frightful' + -ious.
來自拉丁文 atrōx「殘忍、兇猛、可怕」加 -ious。
組成From Latin atrox, 'cruel, fierce, frightful,' plus English -ious (having that quality).
同家族的字
- atrocitythe noun for a cruel act, from the same Latin root
- atrociouslythe adverb form
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
atrociousadj/əˈtɹəʊ.ʃəs/
- 1
Frightful, evil, cruel, or monstrous.
- Prisons have been the sites of atrocious mistreatment of prisoners.
- 2
Offensive or heinous.
- I had resolved in my own mind, that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness; and I banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion.
- 3
Very bad; abominable, disgusting.
- Their taste in clothes is just atrocious.
- Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarter-deck.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。