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For eons, humans have contrasted love with hate and good with evil, putting love and good on one side, and hate and evil on the other. The association of hate with evil is baked into the etymology of heinous, which English gained directly from Anglo-French in the 14th century with the meaning we still know today; its source is the Anglo-French noun haine, meaning “hate.” Haine in turn comes from a verb of Germanic origin, hair, also meaning “to hate.” (The similarity between this hair and the other hair is coincidental.) Chaucer’s poem “Troilus and Criseyde” provides an early example of heinous in English: “He rang them out a story like a bell, against her foe who was called Polyphete, so heinous that men might on it spit.”
Examples of heinous in a Sentence
Vibe, May 2001
The verdict … also defined rape for the first time as a crime against humanity, one of the most heinous crimes. The tribunal has previously tried cases involving rape, but defined the rape as torture.
—Marlise Simons, New York Times, 23 Feb. 2001
It's hard enough to figure out what a defendant was thinking when he committed the heinous and bizarre act that has made him a candidate for the insanity defense. And state of mind is what the insanity defense is all about.
—Laura Mansnerus, New York Times Book Review, 26 Oct. 1997
These murders were especially heinous.
people accused of committing heinous crimes
Anna Commander, MSNBC Newsweek, 22 May 2025
Their Christian work turns from mentoring teenage boys to working to lock up some of the same kids in heinous adult prisons.
—Katherine Corcoran, New York Times, 20 May 2025
Experts are quick to point out that trying to attach logic to heinous acts of violence is often an unsatisfying endeavor.
—Cnn.com Wire Service, Mercury News, 20 May 2025
Can the plaintiffs establish to the satisfaction of a jury that these platforms played an active or at least negligent role in this radicalization that culminated in this heinous event?
—New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 19 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for heinous
Cite this Entry
“Heinous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heinous. Accessed 29 May. 2025.
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heinous
adjective
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heinous
adjective
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