enormity

Etymology

From Late Middle English ēnorme (“monstrous or unnatural act; enormity”), from Old French énormité (“enormity”),^[1] 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 (“suffix forming adjectives from nouns”).^[2]

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɪˈnɔːmɪti/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɪˈnɔɹmɪti/
• Hyphenation: enorm‧i‧ty

Noun

enormity (countable and uncountable, plural enormities)

1. (uncountable) Extreme wickedness, nefariousness, or cruelty. [from 15th c.]

   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.

   • 1818, [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. In Three Volumes, volume II, London: Printed [by Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, OCLC 830979744, page 6:

     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.

   • 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 June 2015:

     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.

2. (countable) An act of extreme evil or wickedness. [from 15th c.]
   • 1818, [Mary Shelley], chapter VII, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Printed [by Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, OCLC 830979744, pages 161–162:

     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.

   • 1870 July, Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné, “Art. VII.—Dr Merle D’Aubigne on the Council and Infallibility. The Council and Infallibility: An Address Delivered at Geneva, 10th December 1869, by M. Merle D’Aubigne, D.D. Paris: Michel Levy, 1870.”, in The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, volume XIX, number LXXIII, London: James Nisbet & Co., Berners Street; Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, OCLC 5899908, page 591:

     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.

3. (uncountable) Great size; enormousness, hugeness, immenseness. [from 18th c.]
   • 2008, Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile, New York, N.Y.: BlueBridge, →ISBN, page 103:

     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.

   • 2012 May 13, Alistair Magowan, “Sunderland 0–1 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport‎, archived from the original on 13 March 2015:

     [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.

References