atrocious [M17th] Whereas nowadays atrocious tends to describe something such as bad weather or poor English, it used to be a stronger word which referred to great savagery, cruelty, or wickedness, as in Charles Darwin’s reference to ‘Atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country’ (1845). The source of the word was Latin atrox ‘fierce or cruel’, based on ater ‘black’ and literally meaning ‘black-looking’. Atrocity [E16th] has not had its sense weakened in the same way.