enormity

Noun

enormity (countable and uncountable, plural enormities)

1. (obsolete) Deviation from what is normal or standard; irregularity, abnormality.

   Synonyms:

   anomalousness

2. (uncountable) Deviation from moral normality; extreme wickedness, nefariousness, or cruelty.
   • 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.
   • 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.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...

   Synonyms:

   atrociousness

3. (countable) A breach of law or morality; a transgression, an act of evil or wickedness.
   • 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.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...
   • 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.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....

   Synonyms:

   desecration, violation

4. (proscribed, sometimes, uncountable) Great size; enormousness, hugeness, immenseness.
   • 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.1997, Magda Denes, Castles Burning: A Child’s Life in War
   • 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.2008, Edwin Mullins, The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile, New York, N.Y.: BlueBridge, →ISBN, page 103

   Synonyms:

   ginormity, size, bigness, bulk, largeness, magnitude, scale, immensity, prodigiousness