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terror

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: Terror

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *tres-
Proto-Indo-European *-yeti
Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti
Proto-Indo-European *troséyeti
Proto-Italic *trozeō
Latin terreō
Proto-Indo-European *-os
Proto-Indo-European *-s
Proto-Indo-European *-ōs
Proto-Italic *-ōs
Latin -or
Latin terrorbor.
Old French terreur
Middle French terreurbor.
Middle English terrour
English terror

    From late Middle English terrour, from Old French terreur f (“terror, fear, dread”), from Latin terror m (“fright, fear, terror”), from terrēre (“to frighten, terrify”), from Old Latin tr̥reō, from Proto-Italic *trozeō, from Proto-Indo-European *tre- (“to shake”), *tres- (“to tremble”).

    Pronunciation

    Noun

    terror (countable and uncountable, plural terrors)

    1. (countable, uncountable) Intense dread, fright, or fear.
      Synonyms: see Thesaurus:fear
      • 1794, William Godwin, Things as they are; or, The adventures of Caleb:
        The terrors with which I was seized […] were extreme.
      • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
        "How thinkest thou that I rule this people? I have but a regiment of guards to do my bidding, therefore it is not by force. It is by terror. My empire is of the imagination."
      • 1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 9:
        Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty into the crew. One captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture. Such incidents were not rare.
    2. (uncountable) 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:
    3. (countable) Something or someone that causes such fear.
      • 1788 June, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Mr. Sheridan’s Speech, on Summing Up the Evidence on the Second, or Begum Charge against Warren Hastings, Esq., Delivered before the High Court of Parliament, June 1788”, in Select Speeches, Forensick and Parliamentary, with Prefatory Remarks by N[athaniel] Chapman, M.D., volume I, [Philadelphia, Pa.]: Published by Hopkins and Earle, no. 170, Market Street, published 1808, →OCLC, page 474:
        The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!
      • 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
        The terrors of the storm
      • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
        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.
    4. (uncountable) Terrorism.
      a terror attack
      the War on Terror
      • 2019 July 15, Greg Afinogenov, “The Jewish Case for Open Borders”, in Jewish Currents‎, number Summer 2019:
        Rank-and-file progressives don’t usually think of the immigration policies they support—expanding refugee quotas, easing restrictions on some classes of immigrants, and ending family separation—as an endorsement of detention, deportation, and racialized terror.
    5. (pathology, countable) A night terror.

    Derived terms

    Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
    Translations to be checked

    See also

    Adjective

    terror (comparative more terror, superlative most terror)

    1. (Philippines, slang) A strict teacher who fails most of the students.
      I have a terror math teacher.

    References

    Anagrams

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    Catalan

    Etymology

    (Can this(+) etymology be sourced?) Borrowed from Latin terrōrem m.

    Pronunciation

    Noun

    terror m or (archaic, regional or poetic) f (plural terrors)

    1. terror, horror

    Danish

    Etymology

    Via English, from Latin terror.

    Pronunciation

    Noun

    terror c (singular definite terroren, not used in plural form)

    1. terror

    Declension

    More information common gender, singular ...

    References

    Galician

    Etymology

    Learned borrowing from Latin terror m.

    Pronunciation

    • IPA(key): /tɛˈroɾ/ [t̪ɛˈroɾ]
    • Rhymes: -oɾ
    • Hyphenation: te‧rror

    Noun

    terror m (plural terrores)

    1. terror
      Synonyms: espanto, horror, pavor

    References

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    Hungarian

    Latin

    Norwegian Bokmål

    Norwegian Nynorsk

    Polish

    Portuguese

    Spanish

    Swedish

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