Word.ws English Dictionary

heinous

/ˈheɪnəs/

heinous adjective: totally reprehensible.

Adjective

heinous (comparative more heinous, superlative most heinous)

  1. Totally reprehensible.
    • I hope they catch the person responsible for that heinous crime.
    • The perpetrators of this heinous act must be brought to justice.
  2. Bad, evil or villainous.

heinous meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

heinous in Tamil

கடுங்கொடிய, மிக வெறுக்கத்தக்க

heinous in Urdu

ہولناک, کریہہ, قبیح, شدید, وحشیانہ

heinous in Bengali

অত্যন্ত জঘন্য, নৃশংস

heinous in Malayalam

odious, atrocious, wicked
ഹീനമായ, നിഷ്ഠൂരമായ, കൊടിയ, ഘോരം, അതിദുഷടമായ, ഗർഹണീയമായ
More languagesFewer languages
heinous in Kannada
ಹೇಯ, ಅಸಹ್ಯ, ಘೋರ, ಜುಗುಪ್ಸೆ ಹುಟ್ಟಿಸುವ
heinous in Tagalog
karumal-dumal

Examples of heinous in a sentence

  • The convicted felon asked for leniency, but because the crime was so heinous the judge refused and gave the maximum sentence.
  • It removes culpability from any distortion and makes anything, no matter how heinous, a complete accident.
  • The more heinous and violent the crime, the greater the gifts.

All 11 example sentences with heinous

Synonyms of heinous

Antonyms

Forms of heinous

comparativemore heinous
superlativemost heinous
alternative form (obsolete)hainous

Origin of heinous

From Middle English heynous, from Anglo-Norman hainous, heinous (compare French haineux) from Old French haïr, hadir (“to hate”) (compare Old French en-hadir (“to become filled with hate”)), from Frankish *hattjan (“to hate”) (compare Middle English hetien). More at hate. The fluctuation between pronunciations with /eɪ/ and /iː/ is old; the former reflects adoption of an unmonophthongised pronunciation of Old French -ai-, while the latter reflects a monophthongised form.

Words formed from heinous

Words that rhyme with heinous

Questions about heinous

What does heinous mean?
Heinous means totally reprehensible.
What is heinous in Tamil?
Heinous in Tamil is கடுங்கொடிய, மிக வெறுக்கத்தக்க. See Heinous meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is heinous?
Heinous is an adjective.
How do you pronounce heinous?
Heinous is pronounced /ˈheɪnəs/ (UK).

Words near heinous in the dictionary

  1. Heinold
  2. Heinolds
  3. Heinonen
  4. Heinonens
  5. Heinos
  6. heinous
  7. heinously
  8. heinousness
  9. heinousnesses
  10. Heinrich
  11. heinrichite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heinous (page history and authors); heinous (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); heinous (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); heinous (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); heinous (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); heinous (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-heinous.ogg, en-us-heinous.ogg, en-au-heinous.ogg.

Cite this entry: “heinous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heinous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.