vitious
vitious is the obsolete form of vicious.
Meaning of vicious
Adjective
vicious (comparative more vicious or viciouser, superlative most vicious or viciousest)
- Violent, destructive and cruel.
- Savage and aggressive.
- He had always been remarkably immune from such little ailments, and had only once in his life been ill, of a vicious pneumonia long ago at school. He hadn't the faintest idea what to with a cold in the head, he just took quinine and continued to blow his nose.1922, Michael Arlen, “2/9/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days
- Pertaining to vice; characterised by immorality or depravity.
- We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vicious., Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.195
Forms of vitious
| comparative | more vitious |
|---|---|
| superlative | most vitious |
Origin of vitious
From Latin vitiōsus.
Words formed from vitious
Questions about vitious
- What is vitious the obsolete form of?
- Vitious is the obsolete form of vicious.
Words near vitious in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: vitious (page history and authors); vicious (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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Cite this entry: “vitious.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/vitious. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.