terror
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Terror
Alternative forms
- terrour (obsolete or hypercorrect)
Etymology
From late Middle English terrour, from Old French terreur (“terror, fear, dread”), from Latin terror (“fright, fear, terror”), from terrēre (“to frighten, terrify”), from Old Latin tr̥reō, from Proto-Italic *trozeō, from Proto-Indo-European *tre- (“to shake”), *tres- (“to tremble”).
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈtɛɹ.ɚ/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈtɛɹ.ə/
- Rhymes: -ɛɹə(ɹ), -ɛə(ɹ)
- Hyphenation: ter‧ror
- Homophones: tare, tear (some American accents)
- Homophones: terra, Terra (non-rhotic)
Noun
terror (countable and uncountable, plural terrors)
- (countable, uncountable) Intense dread, fright, or fear.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:fear
- 1794, William Godwin, Things as they are; or, The adventures of Caleb:
- The terrors with which I was seized […] were extreme.
- 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- "How thinkest thou that I rule this people? I have but a regiment of guards to do my bidding, therefore it is not by force. It is by terror. My empire is of the imagination."
- 1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 9:
- Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty into the crew. One captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture. Such incidents were not rare.
- (uncountable) The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
- 1921, Edith Birkhead, The tale of terror: a study of the Gothic romance:
- (countable) Something or someone that causes such fear.
- 1788 June, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Mr. Sheridan’s Speech, on Summing Up the Evidence on the Second, or Begum Charge against Warren Hastings, Esq., Delivered before the High Court of Parliament, June 1788”, in Select Speeches, Forensick and Parliamentary, with Prefatory Remarks by N[athaniel] Chapman, M.D., volume I, [Philadelphia, Pa.]: Published by Hopkins and Earle, no. 170, Market Street, published 1808, →OCLC, page 474:
- The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!
- 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
- The terrors of the storm
- 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
- A chap named Eleazir Kendrick and I had chummed in together the summer afore and built a fish-weir and shanty at Setuckit Point, down Orham way. For a spell we done pretty well. Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand.
- (uncountable) Terrorism.
- a terror attack
- the War on Terror
- 2019 July 15, Greg Afinogenov, “The Jewish Case for Open Borders”, in Jewish Currents, number Summer 2019:
- Rank-and-file progressives don’t usually think of the immigration policies they support—expanding refugee quotas, easing restrictions on some classes of immigrants, and ending family separation—as an endorsement of detention, deportation, and racialized terror.
- (pathology, countable) A night terror.
- (Philippines, slang) A strict teacher that fails most of the students.
Derived terms
- agroterror
- antiterror
- balance of terror
- bioterror
- counterterror
- cyberterror
- ecoterror
- holy terror
- megaterror
- narcoterror
- night terror
- nonterror
- red terror
- reign of terror
- saffron terror
- sleep terror
- stochastic terror
- terrification
- terror bird
- terrorbomb
- terror bomb
- terror-bomb
- terror-bombing
- terror bombing
- terror cell
- terrorcore
- terrorful
- terrorise
- terrorism
- terrorist
- terroristic
- terrorize
- terrorized
- terrorless
- terrorsome
- terrorsploitation
- terror-stricken
- terrorstricken
- terrorstruck
- white terror
- yellow terror
Related terms
Translations
extreme fear
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action or quality of causing dread
something causing fear
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terrorism
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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See also
References
- “terror”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- terror in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
- “terror”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “terror”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Anagrams
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
terror m or (archaic, regional or poetic) f (plural terrors)
Noun
terror c (singular definite terroren, not used in plural form)
References
- “terror” in Den Danske Ordbog
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin terror.
Pronunciation
Noun
terror m (plural terrores)
Related terms
References
- Xavier Varela Barreiro, Xavier Gómez Guinovart (2006–2018) “terror”, in Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: ILG
- Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, editor (2006–2013), “terror”, in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega [Dictionary of Dictionaries of the Galician language] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
- “terror”, in Dicionario da Real Academia Galega (in Galician), A Coruña: Royal Galician Academy, 2012–2024
- “terror” in Dicionário Estraviz de galego (2014).
- Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, Ernesto Xosé González Seoane, María Álvarez de la Granja, editors (2003–2018), “terror”, in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
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