adjective
definition
Violent, destructive and cruel.
definition
Savage and aggressive.
definition
Pertaining to vice; characterised by immorality or depravity.
Examples of vicious in a Sentence
She thinks she is some kind of vicious animal.
This was not a mangy or vicious creature standing before him, but a breathtakingly beautiful, gigantic wolf.
I shall die! she muttered, wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious effort and sinking down again into her former position.
A vicious circle is obviously involved.
All these years I thought I was a vicious killer.
Contrary to his expectations Darnley did not receive the crown matrimonial, and his foolish and haughty behaviour, his vicious habits, and his boisterous companions did not improve matters.
Here his vicious practices became notorious, and in 1772 he was condemned to death at Aix for an unnatural offence, and for poisoning.
Subsequently this vicious principle was extended still further.
Under his influence the Hale Naua Society was organized in 1886 for the spread of idolatry and king-worship; and in the same year a " Board of Health" was formed which revived the vicious practices of the kahunas or medicine-men.
With this dualism and the recognition of the worthlessness and absolutely vicious nature of the material world is combined a decided spiritualism.
We may conclude that Sappho was not utterly vicious, though by no means a paragon of virtue.
In spite of these admonitions all but a few instrument makers have continued to make the vicious type of instrument consisting of a pair of gold-leaves suspended within a glass shade or bottle, no means being provided for keeping the walls of the vessel continually at zero potential.
My whole idea is that if vicious people are united and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same.
These fairies aren't flute playing or peace loving little beings but carry weapons and are more vicious and mischievous.
During his brief administration Vitellius showed indications of a desire to govern wisely, but he was completely under the control of Valens and Caecina, who for their own ends encouraged him in a course of vicious excesses which threw his better qualities into the background.
Even if we do not accept all the stories of his murders and poisonings and immoralities as true, there is no doubt that his greed for money and his essentially vicious nature led him to commit a great number of crimes.
This vicious system, grafted as it was upon an inefficient administration, and added to the weight of a continually depreciated currenc y, debased both by ill-advised fiscal measures and by public cupidity, formed one of the principal causes of the financial embarrassments which assailed the treasury with ever increasing force in the latter part of the 16th and during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The world saw with astonishment this vicious, rough, coarse-fibred man of the world transformed into an austere penitent, who worked miracles of healing.
The owner of an ox which gored a man on the street was only responsible for damages if the ox was known by him to be vicious, even if it caused death.
When the results proved unsatisfactory, remedies were sought in increased administrative supervision, draconian legislation and severe punishment, and no attempt was made to get out of the vicious circle.
He was one of the weakest and most vicious princes that occupied the Byzantine throne.
Cruel, vicious, unscrupulous and strong, the country groaned beneath his oppression.
Yet he did not hesitate to place his powers at the disposal of the most vicious members of that house for the enslavement of Florence.
Whilst they remain with her she is peculiarly vicious and aggressive, defending them with the greatest courage and energy, and when robbed of them is terrible in her rage; but she has been known to desert them when pressed, and even to eat them when starved.
There was a moment when it looked really vicious.
They are monogamous, and their conjugal fidelity contrasts strongly with the vicious habits of the Sinhalese.
Such a process is a vicious circle and has no logical validity.
Vicious Rumors And this one ends with another reference within the same album Who do you think we are?
A vicious cycle of deceit is too easily set up.
She seeems to be caught in her own self-fulfilling vicious circle.
Cooperate with your buddy to tackle the vicious were-rabbits.
For some people, meditation practice, breathing exercises, and yoga can break the vicious cycle of sleeplessness, worry about inability to sleep, and further sleeplessness.
This difficulty can lead to a vicious cycle of recurrent episodes of inflammation, respiratory infections, lung damage, increased production of excess mucus, and possibly airway obstruction.
Not far behind Stefan, however, is his brother Damon (Ian Somerhalder of Lost), a vicious killer intent on torturing his brother for some transgression in their past.
The grounds for a divorce a mensa et thoro, which may be granted for ever or for a limited time only, are cruelty, excessively vicious conduct, or desertion; for a divorce a vinculo matrimonii the chief grounds are impotence at the time of marriage, adultery or deliberate abandonment for three years.
Mouse makes you laugh, he's so vicious.
He dealt with the immodesty of the contemporary stage, supporting his contentions by a long series of references attesting the comparative decency of Latin and Greek drama; with the profane language indulged in by the players; the abuse of the clergy common in the drama; the encouragement of vice by representing the vicious characters as admirable and successful; and finally he supported his general position by the analysis of particular plays, Dryden's Amphitryon, Vanbrugh's Relapse and D'Urfey's Don Quixote.
The new government was pledged to abolish the vicious system by which Paris was fed at the expense of all France, and the cessation of the distribution of bread and meat at nominal prices was fixed for the 20th of February 1796.
Commerce.-Owing to political disorder, difficulty in land communications, and the inheritance of vicious fiscal methods from Spanish colonial administration, the commercial development of Peru has been slow and erratic. There are many ports on the coast, but only eight of them are rated as first class, viz.
He was succeeded by Mwanga, a cruel, weak and vicious youth.
In all his life nothing became him so well as his manner of leaving it; but the fortitude he then showed, even if it was not merely the courage of despair, cannot blind us to the fact that he was little better than a reckless and vicious spendthrift, who was not the less dangerous because his fiercer passions were concealed beneath an affectation of effeminate dandyism.
The great wealth of the old monastic orders exposed them, especially in France and Italy, to the vicious system of commendation, whereby a bishop, an ecclesiastic, or even a layman was appointed " commendatory abbot " of a monastery, merely for the purpose of drawing the revenues (see Abbot); the monasteries were often deprived even of necessary maintenance, the communities dwindled, and regular observance became impossible.
Cringing, venal, avaricious, dishonest, the Arab combines all the faults of a vicious nature with those which a degraded religion inculcates or encourages.
Prins, the chief of the prison department, who has protested that to hope the vicious, hardened offender, after a long detention, "surrounded with every attention, soaked with good counsel, will leave his cell regenerated," is a Utopian dream.
Men are not vicious, but they are not sanctified.
Accompanying this vicious attack on our party was a sanctimonious attitude that claimed that New Labor was morally superior to the Conservative Party.
They will soak up the impact of any vicious swipes made by your school.
The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is nothing vicious in its teachings.
The impact of such widespread unrelenting poverty on children is vicious.
Many became homeless, wandering the country, prey to the vicious Tudor vagrancy laws.