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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

horror.

An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhɒɹə/Northern-England, Received-Pronunciation/ˈhɔɹə/British, Southern, Standard/ˈhɒɾə/Wales/ˈhɔɾəɾ/Scotland
  1. An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.

    countable · uncountable
  2. Something horrible; that which excites horror.

    countable · uncountable
    I saw many horrors during the war.
  3. Intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A genre of fiction designed to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense.

    uncountable
  5. A genre of fiction designed to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense. An individual work in this genre.

    countable
  6. A nasty or ill-behaved person; a rascal or terror.

    colloquial · countable
    The neighbour's kids are a pack of little horrors!
  7. An intense anxiety or a nervous depression; often the horrors.

    countable · informal · uncountable
  8. Delirium tremens.

    countable · in-plural · informal · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.