HORROR • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Horror

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/hˈɔrər/ Listen

noun

Horror n.

A bristling up; a rising into roughness; tumultuous movement. (Archaic) "Such fresh horror as you see driven through the wrinkled waves."

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.

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?"

That which excites horror or dread, or is horrible; gloom; dreariness. "Breathes a browner horror on the woods."

The horrors, delirium tremens. (Colloq.)

See images of 'Horror'

Etymology of 'Horror'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Horror" Quotes from Famous Books

... a frequent and familiar communication with the English envoy in which he showed himself possessed of a good deal of information. The astronomical instruments, from which, as from implements of magic, many of his attendants started with horror, were examined by the monarch with an intelligent eye. On being shown the planisphere, he proved his knowledge of the planets and many of the constellations, by repeating their Arabic names. The telescope, which presented objects inverted,—the compass, by which he could always turn to the ...

— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... throws a spell of horror across his life and his wife's devotion, did not long delay in seizing upon him after his marriage. As early as 1833, the ferocious onslaughts of melancholia had affected him at long intervals. In 1845, on the doctor's ...

— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... struck his eyes, and by that indirect ray of vision which is often strangely effective, he recognized her lying there. It was a disconcerting thing for him, but he rallied instantly and sprang aside, taking a new position just in time to face Father Beret again. A chill crept up his back. The horror which he could not shake off enraged him beyond measure. Gathering fresh energy, he renewed the assault with desperate steadiness the highest product ...

— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... refuse him, though the prospect was a moving horror in her mind? She could close her eyes. He had called her. He wanted her to see it with him. How could she refuse, lessen herself perhaps in his opinion? She leant out upon the window-sill and looked bravely below. Their shoulders were touching—she ...

— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... numberless rich hours of spectatorship, but somehow still find hooked to the wall of memory the picture of this hushed couple in the castle court, with the knocking at the gate, with Macbeth's stare of pitiful horror at his unused daggers and with the grand manner, up to the height of the argument, of Mrs. Kean's coldly portentous snatch of them. What I especially owe that lady is my sense of what she had in common, ...

— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

More quotes...