Extremely wicked, evil, or abominable; shamefully criminal or immoral.
From Latin 'facinorosus' (derived from 'facinus' meaning crime or heinous deed). The word entered English in the 17th century through scholarly and literary usage, referring to the most serious moral offenses.
This is one of English's most dramatic words for evil—so powerful that Shakespeare and Milton used it—yet almost no one says it anymore, making it the kind of theatrical insult a character in a period drama might dramatically hiss!
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