Terror
Pronunciation
Alternative forms
- terrour obsolete or hypercorrect
Origin
From Old French terreur ("terror, fear, dread"), from Latin accusative terrorem ("fright, fear, terror"), from terrere ("to frighten, terrify"), from Proto-Indo-European *tre- ("to shake"), Proto-Indo-European *tres- ("to tremble").
Full definition of terror
Noun
terror
(countable and uncountable; plural terrors)- (uncountable) Intense dread, fright, or fear.
- (countable) Specific instance of being intensely terrified.
- 1794, William Godwin, Things as they are; or, The adventures of CalebThe terrors with which I was seized...were extreme.
- (uncountable)Â 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)Â Something or someone that causes such fear.
- 1841, Ralph Waldo EmersonThe terrors of the storm
- 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, Mr. Pratt's Patients Chapter 1, 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.