What does vicious mean?
Vicious is an adjective describing cruelty, savagery, or malicious behavior, often with a sense of extreme or concentrated brutality. It can also describe something that causes severe harm, such as a vicious attack, a vicious animal, or a vicious cycle in which problems continually intensify one another. The word is usually stronger and more emotionally charged than cruel, although its precise force depends on context: in a vicious circle, it indicates a self-reinforcing and damaging situation rather than personal cruelty. Historically, vicious also had a broader sense of moral fault or degeneracy. Today it remains especially useful for conveying brutality, menace, and destructive intensity. Its related noun viciousness describes the quality of being cruel or vicious, while the adverb viciously is commonly used to describe acts done with cruelty or severity.
adjectiveCruel, savage, or malicious in a particularly intense or extreme way. It can also describe something severely harmful, destructive, or characterized by viciousness.
- Cruel, savage, or malicious, especially when describing an attack, person, or act of cruelty.
- Severely harmful, destructive, or extreme in effect, as in a vicious cycle or a vicious wind.
- Morally corrupt or perverse; this sense is now less common and often literary or archaic.
"The dog was saved from its vicious attack on the smaller animal."
"The witness described the prisoner as vicious and capable of extreme cruelty."
"The delay created a vicious cycle in which each attempt to solve the problem made it worse."
Vicious began with the idea of a fault or flaw and developed into one of English's sharpest words for cruelty and destructive intensity.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does vicious come from?
Vicious entered English from Latin through French. Its Latin form, viciousus, meant wicked, perverse, or degenerate and was derived from vitium, a word for fault, vice, or defect. The word therefore originally emphasized moral fault before becoming closely associated with cruelty, savagery, and harmful behavior. Modern relatives include vice and the verb vitiate, meaning to spoil or impair, both of which continue the older idea of a flaw or corruption.
Related word forms
How vicious is actually used
Vicious is strongly negative and generally more intense than cruel. It is commonly used for brutal behavior or harm, while the phrase vicious circle has a more technical meaning: a situation in which an initial problem causes further problems that make the original problem worse.
Easily confused with vicious
A vice is a moral fault or bad habit, while vicious describes something cruel, malicious, savage, or severely harmful.