Word of the Day

Tuesday December 29, 2009

egregious [ih-GREE-juhs]

adjective

Conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible.
Conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible.

I've engaged in thousands of lies -- hurtful lies, egregious lies, fabulously elaborate lies. But none of them cut at my conscience quite so deeply as those first, innocuous, self-protective lies that, strictly speaking, weren't lies at all. Looking back on them now, it feels as if those were my first real sins, the indiscretions that began bringing me into dirty, complicated adulthood, long before I was ready to go.

Julie Powell, "Down A Slippery Slope", New York Times, Dec 20, 2009
It was at the clubhouse at Bella Collina, the swanky subdivision that is the poster child for everything that went wrong in the land boom-and-bust in Lake County. The most egregious property-flipping started there, and the amount of delinquent taxes on lots in the upscale Montverde development is outrageous.

Lauren Ritchie, "Let economic advisers step into 'Sunshine'", Orlando Sentinel, Dec 20, 2009
He was a strange combination of faults and good qualities, without egregious vices, but all his virtues capable of being annihilated by passion, anger, jealousy, or grief.

Jules Claretie (1840 - 1913) A French writer. Prince Zilah, v2

Origin of the Word

Egregious, approximately 1534, derives from Latin egregius, from the phrase ex grege "rising above the flock," from ex "out of" + grege, grex-, "herd, flock."