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horrible

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English

Etymology

First attested in Middle English[1] (alternately as horrible and orrible)[2] in 1303[3]: from Old French[1][2] horrible, orrible, orible,[3] from Latin horribilis,[1][2][3] from horr(ēre) (“tremble”) + -ibilis (“-ible”).[2]

Pronunciation

Noun

horrible (plural horribles)

  1. A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
      Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles!
    • 1982, United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The Genocide Convention: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate:
      A lot of the possible horribles conjured up by the people objecting to this convention ignore the plain language of this treaty.
    • 1991, Alastair Scott, Tracks Across Alaska: A Dog Sled Journey:
      The pot had previously simmered skate wings, cods' heads, whales, pigs' hearts and a long litany of other horribles.
    • 2000 January 21, John Dean, CNN interview‎:
      I'm trying to convince him that the criminal behavior that's going on at the White House has to end. And I give him one horrible after the next. I just keep raising them. He sort of swats them away.
    • 2001, Neil K. Komesar, Law's Limits: The Rule of Law and the Supply and Demand of Rights:
      Many scholars have demonstrated these horribles and contemplated significant limitations on class actions.
  2. A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles.

Translations

Adjective

horrible (comparative horribler or more horrible, superlative horriblest or most horrible)

  1. Causing horror; terrible; shocking.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:
      Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.
    • 1949, J. D. Salinger, The Laughing Man:
      Strangers fainted dead away at the sight of the Laughing Man's horrible face. Acquaintances shunned him.
      The New Yorker, March 19
    • 1953, Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451:
      Some of us have had plastic surgery on our faces and fingerprints. Right now we have a horrible job; we're waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end.
    • 1933, James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times:
      Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.
  2. Tremendously bad.
    • 2010, Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010, page 599:
      Having now absorbed all or parts of 750 responses to my complaints about Transformers, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most of those writing agree with me that it is a horrible movie.

Synonyms

Translations

References

  1. [1]
    The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
  2. [2]
    Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1·1)
  3. [3]
    Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

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