- 1暴行（尤指戰爭中殘害人的行為）
An atrocity is an extremely cruel and violent act, especially in war or against people who cannot fight back — massacres, torture, attacks on civilians. News and history writing use it; it is a heavy word. You would not call a rude comment an atrocity unless you were joking, and even then the joke can sound ugly because it borrows shock from real suffering. It is countable: one atrocity, many atrocities. There is a milder stretch ('that haircut is an atrocity'), but that is someone playing with the word on purpose. For a , keep the war-and-cruelty sense first. Though actually, calling something an atrocity is also a moral claim, not only a description; people can argue over whether a given act deserves the word.
組成From French atrocité and Latin atrocitas, from atrox 'terrible, cruel.' That Latin word is related to ater, 'dull black' — the old picture is something dark and frightening.
同家族的字
- atrociousthe adjective from the same Latin root
- atrociouslythe adverb from atrocious
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。
atrocitynoun/əˈtɹɒsɪti/
- 1
An extremely cruel act; a horrid act of injustice.
- to carry out / commit / perpetrate an atrocity
- The regime is guilty of mass atrocities including forced displacement and the use of chemical weapons.
- 2
The quality or state of being atrocious; enormous wickedness; extreme criminality or cruelty.
- 1553, John Bradford, letter, in Miles Coverdale (ed.), Certain Most Godly, Fruitful, and Comfortable letters, London: John Day, 1564, pp. 481-482, Thys wil I muse on, & way with my self, [tha]t I may dulye knowe, both in me and in al other things, the atrocitie and bitternesse of synne which dwelleth in me, & so may the more hartely geue ouer my self wholy to [th]e lord Christ my Sauiour,
- What character is so detestable as that of one who takes pleasure to sow dissention among friends, and to turn their most tender love into mortal hatred? Yet wherein does the atrocity of this so much abhorred injury consist? […] It is in depriving them of that friendship itself, in robbing them of each others affections […]
- 3
An object considered to be extremely unattractive or undesirable.
- [S]ome of the printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accordeon—[…]
- The Pools had given them a “hanging lamp,” coveted by the farmer’s wife; a hideous atrocity in yellow, with pink roses on its shade and prisms dangling and tinkling all around the edge.
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。