enormity

Definition

Deviation from what is normal or standard; irregularity, abnormality.

Etymology

From Late Middle English ēnorme (“monstrous or unnatural act; enormity”), from Old French énormité (“enormity”), from Latin ēnormitās (“irregularity; enormity”), from ēnōrmis (“irregular, unusual; enormous, immense”) + -itās (suffix forming nouns indicating states of being). Ēnōrmis is derived from e- (a variant of ex- (prefix meaning ‘out; away’) + nōrma (“norm, standard”) + -is (Latin suffix forming adjectives from nouns).

Example Sentences

• "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."
• "Hannah Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" in her dispatches for The New Yorker from Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem in 1961. It was her attempt to square the mediocrity of the man with the enormity of his crimes."

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