MEANING
1. A size, extent, or importance so great that it is difficult to take in.
2. Extreme moral evil, or an act that displays such evil.
Use it for
describing a scale the mind struggles to grasp; showing a person realizing the full consequences of something; portraying a task or loss as overwhelmingly largeExpresses overwhelming scale or moral horror, while warning that these meanings should not be confused. Writing functions: Cosmic Horror fallback.
Words that belong together
- the enormity of the task
- grasp the enormity
- the enormity of the loss
On the page
Only from the ridge did she grasp the enormity of the empty city.
The enormity of the loss reached him while he was counting the unused chairs.
No account of the building’s beauty could excuse the enormity of what had happened inside.
The testimony forced the court to confront enormities that the official record had reduced to dates.
Word forms
- Base
- enormity
Usage notes
Noun: usually uncountable for scale or extreme wickedness; countable enormity, enormities for individual atrocious acts. Enormousness is a related word, not a plural or alternate spelling. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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