heinous

CEFRC2

/ˈheɪnəs/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Extremely wicked, cruel, or shocking.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Bad, evil or villainous.

Examples

  • Any murder is gruesome but this one was especially heinous.

  • Tom was the victim of a heinous crime.

At a glance

Sits at C2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
3
Parts of speech
1
Citations
1
Synonyms
3

Also pronounced

  • /ˈhiːnəs/

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meaning

  1. Totally reprehensible.

More examples

In context

  • I hope they catch the person responsible for that heinous crime.

  • The perpetrators of this heinous act must be brought to justice.

  • Perhaps burdened by the weight of history, talk of the heinous 2-2 draw in 2002, or the magnitude of the fixture, Scotland seemed spooked in the early throes.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The criminal committed a blank crime that shocked everyone.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

From Middle English hainous, from Old French haïneus (compare French haineux) from haïr (“to hate”), 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.