Definition of "atrocity"

[…] it seemed an atrocity or cruelty to Narses a good General, to take punishment of innoxious Hostages:

1662, William Pynchon, The Covenant of Nature Made with Adam‎, London, Chapter 11, Section 3, p. 277

It was impossible for the convention to suffer the crimes they had committed, and the still greater atrocities which they had meditated, to pass unnoticed.

1795, Helen Maria Williams, Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France‎, London: G. G. and J. Robinson, Letter 4, p. 61

This devilish outrage, this fiendish murder, produced, as it was well calculated to do, a tremendous sensation. […] The atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out, in reprobation of it;

1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 8, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York, Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], part I (Life as a Slave), page 123

“Any delay in arresting the assassin,” I observed, “might give him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity.”

1887, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 7, in A Study in Scarlet‎, New York and London: Street & Smith, page 87

The United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union have received from many quarters evidence of atrocities, massacres and cold-blooded mass executions which are being perpetrated by Hitlerite forces in many of the countries they have overrun and from which they are now being steadily expelled.

1943, Declaration of the Four Nations on General Security

Thys wil I muse on, & way with my self, [tha]t I may dulye knowe, both in me and in al other things, the atrocitie and bitternesse of synne which dwelleth in me, & so may the more hartely geue ouer my self wholy to [th]e lord Christ my Sauiour,

1553, John Bradford, letter, in Miles Coverdale (ed.), Certain Most Godly, Fruitful, and Comfortable letters, London: John Day, 1564, pp. 481-482

What character is so detestable as that of one who takes pleasure to sow dissention among friends, and to turn their most tender love into mortal hatred? Yet wherein does the atrocity of this so much abhorred injury consist? […] It is in depriving them of that friendship itself, in robbing them of each others affections […]

1759, Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments‎, London: A. Millar, Part 1, Section 3, Chapter 4, p. 81

an apology devised after the commission of the deed, to cover up its atrocity

1843, William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico‎, New York: Harper, Volume 2, Book 4, Chapter 8, p. 284

Here was one who had spent his life in lying to the world, and who was in his very heart shocked at the atrocity of a man who had lied to him!

1875, Anthony Trollope, chapter 68, in The Way We Live Now‎, volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […]

Hernandez […] had been an inoffensive, small ranchero, kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home during one of the civil wars, and forced to serve in the army.

1904, Joseph Conrad, Nostromo‎, New York: Harper, Part 1, Chapter 8, p. 119

[…] some of the printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accordeon—

1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “”, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, page 300

The Pools had given them a “hanging lamp,” coveted by the farmer’s wife; a hideous atrocity in yellow, with pink roses on its shade and prisms dangling and tinkling all around the edge.

1924, Edna Ferber, chapter 7, in So Big‎, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, page 114