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terrorist

nounadjectivecommon in dialogue

  • //ˈtɛɹəɹɪst//

A person, group, or organization that uses violent action, or the threat of violent action, to further political goals.

noun

  1. 1

    A person, group, or organization that uses violent action, or the threat of violent action, to further political goals.

    Hooooly shit! That is terrible, because (1), he is not a terrorist, and (2), I do hope we have a better strategy for dealing with terrorists than flagging their credit reports and denying them their dream apartments! Hey, not in America! Not in America!

  2. 2

    historicalAn agent or partisan of the revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror in France.

  3. 3

    Variant of touristDeliberate misspelling of tourist.

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 Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō) Proto-Hellenic *-tās Ancient Greek -τής (-tḗs) Ancient Greek -ῐστής (-ĭstḗs)bor. Latin -istader. Old French -istebor. Middle English -ist English -ist English terrorist From terror + -ist. In the historical sense, after French terroriste. First used in 1794 in the Courier and Evening Gazette.

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or relating to terrorism.

    2002 January 29, George Walker Bush, "2002 State of the Union Address". States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

Forms

plural
terrorists
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).