Crossword Dictionary
outrage
indignation, outrage - n
a feeling of righteous anger
If you consider how people are treated in airports an outrage, you get really angry over airport security or the price of airport food. Six dollars for a piece of pizza? What an outrage!
Something is an outrage when it is shocking and makes you angry. Stealing from an orphanage? That's an outrage. Sometimes outrage leads to action. Public outrage over the latest political scandal often makes the news.
etymology
c. 1300, "evil deed, offense, crime; affront, indignity, act not within established or reasonable limits," of food, drink, dress, speech, etc., from Old French outrage "harm, damage; insult; criminal behavior; presumption, insolence, overweening" (12c.), earlier oltrage (11c.), from Vulgar Latin *ultraticum "excess," from Latin ultra "beyond" (from suffixed form of PIE root *al- "beyond").
Etymologically, "the passing beyond reasonable bounds" in any sense; meaning narrowed in English toward violent excesses because of folk etymology from out + rage. Of injuries to feelings, principles, etc., from 1769.