terror
nounadjectivecommon in dialogue
- United Kingdom//ˈtɛɹə//
- United States//ˈtɛɹɚ//
- Australia//ˈteɹə//
- Scotland//ˈtɛɾəɾ//
- //tɛɚ//
Intense dread, fright, or fear.
noun
- 1
Intense dread, fright, or fear.
The terrors with which I was seized […] were extreme.
"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."
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
The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
[object Object]
- 3
Something or someone that causes such fear.
The terrors of the storm
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.
Paradoxically, the sharp and unambiguous formulas in which Lenin called for the use of terror and denied the possibility of democracy and freedom testified to the fact that freedom had not yet been completely eradicated.
- 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 detention, deportation, and racialized terror.
- 5
A night terror.
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 (“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”).
adjective
- 1
slangA strict teacher who fails most of the students.
I have a terror math teacher.
Forms
- plural
- terrors
- comparative
- more terror
- superlative
- most terror