Heinous

How to spell heinous

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce heinous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does heinous mean?

1. adjectiveUtterly wicked, hateful, or shockingly evil.

Heinous in a sentence

• The jury heard evidence of a heinous crime that horrified the courtroom.

• Reporters described the attack as one of the most heinous acts in the city's history.

Where does heinous come from?

Language of origin: French

This word arrived in English in the late 1300s from Old French, where 'haineus' or 'haineux' meant 'hateful' or 'full of hate'. That adjective was built on 'haine', the Old French noun for hatred, which in turn came from the verb 'hair', meaning 'to hate'. The deeper roots are Germanic rather than Latin: 'hair' descends from a Frankish word related to the same ancestral stock that gave English the verb 'hate'. So at heart 'heinous' simply describes something so wicked it deserves to be hated, and the modern sense of an utterly odious or shocking crime grew directly from that idea. The spelling trap lives in the 'ei' and the silent stretch before the '-ous': the word is said 'HAY-nus', not 'HEE-nee-us', so writers are often tempted to add an extra 'i' that was never there.

How the word is built

• hein- (from Old French haine: hatred)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)