Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear.
  • noun A state or condition marked by this feeling: synonym: fear.
  • noun An intense dislike or abhorrence.
  • noun A cause of horror.
  • noun A genre of fiction or other artistic work evoking suspense and horror, especially through the depiction of gruesome or supernatural elements.
  • noun A work of this genre.
  • noun Informal One that is unpleasant, ugly, or disagreeable.
  • noun Informal Intense nervous depression or anxiety. Often used with the.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A bristling or ruffling, as of the surface of water; a rippling.
  • noun A shivering or shuddering, as in the cold fit which precedes a fever, usually accompanied with contraction and roughening of the skin; a rigor.
  • noun A painful emotion of fear or abhorrence; a shuddering with terror or loathing; the feeling inspired by something frightful or shocking.
  • noun Shrinking dread; great dislike or repugnance: as, to hold publicity in horror; to have a horror of falsehood.
  • noun That which excites horror or terror; that which causes gloom or dread: as, the horrors of war; a place of horrors.
  • noun Delirium tremens.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Archaic A bristling up; a rising into roughness; tumultuous movement.
  • noun 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.
  • noun A painful emotion of fear, dread, and abhorrence; a shuddering with terror and detestation; the feeling inspired by something frightful and shocking.
  • noun That which excites horror or dread, or is horrible; gloom; dreariness.
  • noun [Colloq.] delirium tremens.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An intense painful emotion of fear or repugnance.
  • noun An intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence.
  • noun A literary genre, generally of a gothic character.
  • noun informal An intense anxiety or a nervous depression; this sense can also be spoken or written as the horrors.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun intense aversion
  • noun something that inspires dislike; something horrible
  • noun intense and profound fear

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin horror ("a bristling, a shaking, trembling as with cold or fear, terror"), from horrere ("to bristle, shake, be terrified").

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Examples

Comments

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  • See prosaically comments

    March 25, 2012

  • "horror movie" pronounced quickly sounds very much like "whore movie".

    May 23, 2018