terror

Intense dread, fright, or fear.

Adjective

  1. A strict teacher who fails most of the students.
    • I have a terror math teacher.

Origin

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 (“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”).

Forms

more terror most terror terrour

Related

alarm consternation dismay dread fright

Noun

  1. Intense dread, fright, or fear.
    • The terrors with which I was seized […] were extreme. - 1794, William Godwin, Things as they are; or, The adventures of Caleb:
    • "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." - 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider...
    • 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...

    Synonyms: fear afraidness

  2. The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
  3. Something or someone that causes such fear.
    • 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...
    • The terrors of the storm - 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
    • 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...
  4. Terrorism.
    • a terror attack
    • the War on Terror
    • 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...
  5. A night terror.

Forms

terrors terrour

Synonyms

horror terror

Hypernyms

fear

Related

in terrorem terrible terrific terrify alarm dismay panic frighten Don't Panic on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Derived

agroterror antiterror balance of terror bioterror counterterror cyberterror ecoterror holy terror megaterror narcoterror night terror nonterror pterror red terror reign of terror Reign of Terror saffron terror sleep terror stochastic terror terrification terror bird terrorbomb terror bomb terror-bomb