Vicious

How to spell vicious

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vicious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vicious mean?

1. adjectiveDeliberately cruel, violent, or aggressive.

Vicious in a sentence

• The dog gave a vicious bite that needed stitches.

• She faced a vicious smear campaign from a rival firm.

Where does vicious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin vitiosus, meaning 'faulty, corrupt, or full of defects', which was built on the noun vitium, meaning 'a fault, blemish, or vice'. English took it in during the 1300s by way of Old French vicious, and at first it carried that original sense of being morally flawed or addicted to vice. Over the centuries the meaning hardened from 'wicked' into the everyday modern sense of 'savage, violent, or spiteful', as in a vicious dog or a vicious attack. The same vitium root sits inside the plain English word 'vice', and recognising that link helps explain the spelling: it is vic-, not vis-, even though the middle sounds like 'sh'. The classic trap is the soft 'ci' that produces the 'shus' ending, which tempts writers to add an extra s or to reorder the letters.

How the word is built

• vici- (from Latin vitium: fault, vice)
• -ous (full of)