flagrant
Americanadjective
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shockingly noticeable or evident; obvious; glaring.
a flagrant error.
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notorious; scandalous.
a flagrant crime; a flagrant offender.
- Synonyms:
- egregious, monstrous, disgraceful
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Archaic. blazing, burning, or glowing.
adjective
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openly outrageous
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obsolete burning or blazing
Related Words
Flagrant, glaring, gross, outrageous, rank are adjectives suggesting extreme offensiveness. Flagrant, with a root sense of flaming or flaring, suggests evil or immorality so evident that it cannot be ignored or overlooked: a flagrant violation of the law. Glaring, meaning “shining brightly,” is similar to flagrant in emphasizing conspicuousness but usually lacks the imputation of immorality: a glaring error in computing the interest. Gross, which basically signifies excessive size, is even more negative in implication than the foregoing two terms, suggesting a mistake or impropriety of major proportions: a gross miscarriage of justice. Outrageous describes acts so far beyond the limits of decent behavior or accepted standards as to be totally insupportable: an outrageous abuse of the public trust. Rank, with its suggestion of bad odor, describes open offensiveness of the most objectionable kind, inviting total and unalloyed disapprobation: rank dishonesty, stinking to high heaven; Only rank stupidity would countenance such a step.
Other Word Forms
- flagrance noun
- flagrancy noun
- flagrantly adverb
- flagrantness noun
- nonflagrance noun
- nonflagrancy noun
- nonflagrant adjective
- nonflagrantly adverb
- unflagrant adjective
- unflagrantly adverb
Etymology
Origin of flagrant
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin flagrant- (stem of flagrāns ), present participle of flagrāre “to burn”; -ant
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
