horror

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

See also: Horror

English

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Alternative forms

  • horrour (UK, hypercorrect spelling or archaic)

Etymology

From Middle English horer, horrour, from Old French horror, from Latin horror (a bristling, a shaking, trembling as with cold or fear, terror), from horrere (to bristle, shake, be terrified). Displaced native Old English ōga.

Pronunciation

Noun

horror (countable and uncountable, plural horrors)

  1. (countable, uncountable) An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.
    • 1712, Joseph Addison, Cato: A tragedy, published 1750, page 44:
      Their swarthy Hosts wou'd darken all our Plains, / Doubling the native Horror of the War, / And making Death more grim.
  2. (countable, uncountable) Something horrible; that which excites horror.
    I saw many horrors during the war.
    • 1898 July 3, Philadelphia Inquirer, page 22:
      The Home Magazine for July (Binghamton and New York) contains ‘The Patriots' War Chant,’ a poem by Douglas Malloch; ‘The Story of the War,’ by Theodore Waters; ‘A Horseman in the Sky,’ by Ambrose Bierce, with a portrait of Mr. Bierce, whose tales of horror are horrible of themselves, not as war is horrible; ‘A Yankee Hero,’ by W. L. Calver; ‘The Warfare of the Future,’ by Louis Seemuller; ‘Florence Nightingale,’ by Susan E. Dickenson, with two rare portraits, etc.
    • 2009, Devin Watson, Horror Screenwriting:
      Could there be stories with more horror than these?
  3. (countable, uncountable) Intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence.
  4. (uncountable) A genre of fiction designed to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense.
    • 1917 February 11, New York Times, Book reviews, page 52:
      Those who enjoy horror, stories overflowing with blood and black mystery, will be grateful to Richard Marsh for writing ‘The Beetle.’
    1. (countable) An individual work in this genre.
    • 1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 156:
      A well-received Johnny Fuller R & B horror called "Haunted House."
    • 2006, Pierluigi on Cinema:
      [] there were hastily produced B movies, such as the peplums, the spaghetti westerns, the detective stories, the horrors.
  5. (countable, colloquial) A nasty or ill-behaved person; a rascal or terror.
    The neighbour's kids are a pack of little horrors!
  6. (informal) An intense anxiety or a nervous depression; often the horrors.
  7. (in the plural, informal) Delirium tremens.
    • 1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1965, →OCLC, page 53:
      `My belief is that he had the horrors without knowin' it.'

Synonyms

Hypernyms

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Further reading

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English horror.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈɦɔ.rɔr/
  • Audio:(file)
  • Hyphenation: hor‧ror

Noun

horror m (uncountable)

  1. horror (genre of fiction)

Derived terms

References

Galician

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin horror.

Pronunciation

Noun

horror m (plural horrores)

  1. horror
    Synonyms: espanto, pavor, terror

References

Hungarian

Latin

Old French

Polish

Portuguese

Romanian

Spanish

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