(uncountable)Â The quality or state of being atrocious; enormous wickedness; extreme criminality or cruelty.
(countable)Â An extremely cruel act; a horrid act of injustice.
1943, S:Declaration of the Four Nations on General Security, 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.
