Dictionary

ultraviolent en · ADJ

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Latin ūls Proto-Indo-European *-teros? Latin -ter Old Latin -ād Latin -ā Latin ultrābor. English ultra- Latin violentusbor. Old French violentbor. Middle English violent English violent English ultraviolent From ultra- + violent.

Meanings

1. (not-comparable) Extremely violent; of utmost violence.
   • Of course, the game that was ruining workplace productivity and infrastructure wasn’t innocent Tetris or the nationalistic Wolfenstein 3D—it was a game in which an ultraviolent marine gleefully murdered demons on a satanic Mars. 2021 October 29, Trevor Strunk, “How To Get Away With Making An Ultraviolent Video Game”, in Defector, archived from the original on 22 Feb 2024:
   • In contrast to the situation in both civil and malignant communities, in turbulent minor communities no individual type has gained the upper hand, so that there is no predominant individual type but instead an admixture of types. Thus ultraviolent people with their unmitigated violent phantom communities, violent people with their mitigated violent phantom communities, and marginally violent people with their nonviolent phantom communities all come to live, work, and play in close physical proximity with one another. 1997, Lonnie H. Athens, Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 150:
   • But today, as I absorb the blunt aesthetic blows of one ultraviolent film after another, all I can make of it is that Hollywood, for reasons of its own, is hopelessly enamored of homicide. The plot is barely there anymore. 2013, Harper, Harper's Magazine, Harper & Brothers, page 6:
   • "The Crow," because of Lee and the crack filmmaking team behind him, succeeds in its bid to translate comic book style to bigscreen ambiance as a sort of ultraviolent "Batman." It's a heavyweight finale to a career of an actor whose potential was just beginning to surface. 1994, UCLA Daily Bruin, Los Angeles, page 20:

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