Of persons: Guilty of or addicted to atrocious crimes; deeply criminal, extremely wicked.

Hence: Notorious, manifest, downright, thorough-paced, unmitigated. Extended from thief to traitor, knave, rebel, coward, usurer; after 1575…

Used as an intensive with nouns of reproachful sense: Thoroughgoing, ‘unmitigated’: see arrant, adj. 3a 3b.

figurative. Of an offence (after Isaiah i. 18), hence occasionally of an offender: Heinous, deep-dyed.

Characterized by savage enormity; excessively and wantonly cruel; heinously wicked. of persons or agents.