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horror

- 6 dictionary results

hor⋅ror

[hawr-er, hor-]
–noun
1. an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear: to shrink back from a mutilated corpse in horror.
2. anything that causes such a feeling: killing, looting, and other horrors of war.
3. such a feeling as a quality or condition: to have known the horror of slow starvation.
4. a strong aversion; abhorrence: to have a horror of emotional outbursts.
5. Informal. something considered bad or tasteless: That wallpaper is a horror. The party was a horror.
6. horrors, Informal.
a. delirium tremens.
b. extreme depression.
–adjective
7. inspiring or creating horror, loathing, aversion, etc.: The hostages told horror stories of their year in captivity.
8. centered upon or depicting terrifying or macabre events: a horror movie.
–interjection
9. horrors, (used as a mild expression of dismay, surprise, disappointment, etc.)

Origin:
1520–30; < L horror, equiv. to horr- (s. of horrēre to bristle with fear; see horrendous ) + -or -or 1 ; r. ME orrour < AF < L horrōr-, s. of horror


1. dread, dismay, consternation. See terror. 4. loathing, antipathy, detestation, hatred, abomination.


1. serenity. 4. attraction.
hor·ror   (hôr'ər, hŏr'-)   
n.  
  1. An intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear. See Synonyms at fear.
  2. Intense dislike; abhorrence.
  3. A cause of horror.
  4. Informal Something unpleasant, ugly, or disagreeable: That hat is a horror.
  5. horrors Informal Intense nervous depression or anxiety. Often used with the.

[Middle English horrour, from Old French horreur, from Latin horror, from horrēre, to tremble.]

Horror

Hor"ror\, n. [Formerly written horrour.] [L. horror, fr. horrere to bristle, to shiver, to tremble with cold or dread, to be dreadful or terrible; cf. Skr. h?sh to bristle.]

1. A bristling up; a rising into roughness; tumultuous movement. [Archaic]

Such fresh horror as you see driven through the wrinkled waves. --Chapman.

2. A shaking, shivering, or shuddering, as in the cold fit which precedes a fever; in old medical writings, a chill of less severity than a rigor, and more marked than an algor.

3. A painful emotion of fear, dread, and abhorrence; a shuddering with terror and detestation; the feeling inspired by something frightful and shocking.

How could this, in the sight of heaven, without horrors of conscience be uttered? --Milton.

4. That which excites horror or dread, or is horrible; gloom; dreariness.

Breathes a browner horror on the woods. --Pope.

The horrors, delirium tremens. [Colloq.]
Language Translation for : horror
Spanish: horror,
German: das Entsetzen,
Japanese: 恐怖

horror 
c.1375, from O.Fr. horreur, from L. horror "bristling, roughness, rudeness, shaking, trembling," from horrere "to bristle with fear, shudder," from PIE base *ghers- "to bristle" (cf. Skt. harsate "bristles," Avestan zarshayamna- "ruffling one's feathers," L. eris (gen.) "hedgehog," Welsh garw "rough"). As a genre in film, 1936. Chamber of horrors originally (1849) was a gallery of notorious criminals in Madame Tussaud's wax exhibition.

Main Entry: hor·ror
Pronunciation: 'hor-&r, 'här-
Function: noun
: painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay

horror

see under throw up one's hands.

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