terror

English

Alternative forms

• terrour (obsolete or hypercorrect)

Etymology

From late Middle English terrour, from Old French terreur (“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”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtɛɹ.ɚ/
  • (some accents) IPA^(key): /tɛɚ/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtɛɹ.ə/
• Rhymes: -ɛɹə(ɹ), -ɛə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: ter‧ror
• Homophones: tare, tear (some American accents)
• Homophones: terra, Terra (non-rhotic accents)

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, : 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

Related terms

Translations

See also

• alarm
• fright
• consternation
• dread
• dismay

References

• “terror”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• terror in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• “terror”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “terror”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• rorter

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin terrōrem.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Central)
• IPA^(key): (Balearic)
• IPA^(key): (Valencian)

Noun

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

1. terror, horror

Danish

Noun

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

1. terror

References

• “terror” in Den Danske Ordbog

Galician

Etymology

From Latin terror.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):

Noun

terror m (plural terrores)

1. terror

   Synonyms: espanto, horror, pavor

Related terms

References

• “terror” in Xavier Varela Barreiro & Xavier Gómez Guinovart: Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval. SLI / Grupo TALG / ILG, 2006–2018.
• “terror” in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega, SLI - ILGA 2006–2013.
• “terror” in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega. Santiago: ILG.

Hungarian

Etymology

Borrowed from English terror, from Latin terror.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):
• Hyphenation: ter‧ror
• Rhymes: -or

Noun

terror (plural terrorok)

1. terror (especially the action or quality of causing dread)

   Synonym: megfélemlítés

Declension

Derived terms

• terrortámadás

References

Further reading

• terror in Bárczi, Géza and László Országh. A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára (‘The Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language’, abbr.: ÉrtSz.). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959–1962. Fifth ed., 1992: →ISBN

Latin

Etymology

From terreō (“frighten, terrify”) +‎ -or.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈter.ror/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈter.ror/,

Noun

terror m (genitive terrōris); third declension

1. a dread, terror, great fear, alarm, panic

   Synonyms: pavor, timor, metus

2. an object of fear or dread

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Related terms

Descendants

References

• “terror”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “terror”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to inspire fear, terror: timorem, terrorem alicui inicere, more strongly incutere
    
  • terror, panic seizes some one: terror incidit alicui
    
  • terror, panic seizes some one: terror invadit in aliquem (rarely alicui, after Livy aliquem)
    
  • to overwhelm some one with terror: in terrorem conicere aliquem
    

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

Borrowed from English terror, from Latin terror.

Noun

terror m (definite singular terroren, uncountable)

1. terror

Derived terms

• terrorangrep
• terrorhandling
• terrorregime

References

• “terror” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

Borrowed from English terror, from Latin terror.

Noun

terror m (definite singular terroren, uncountable)

1. terror

Derived terms

• terrorhandling
• terrorregime

References

• “terror” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Polish

Polish Wikipedia has an article on:

terror

Wikipedia ^pl

Etymology

Borrowed from English terror, from Old French terreur (“terror, fear, dread”), from Latin terror (“fright, fear, terror”), from terrēre (“to frighten, terrify”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛr.rɔr/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛrrɔr
• Syllabification: ter‧ror

Noun

terror m inan

1. (politics) terror (policy of political repression and violence intended to subdue political opposition)

Declension

Derived terms

Further reading

• terror in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• terror in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin terrōrem.

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: ter‧ror

Noun

terror m (plural terrores)

1. terror (intense fear)
   • 2003, J. K. Rowling, Lia Wyler, Harry Potter e a Ordem da Fênix, Rocco, page 493:

     Os olhos do elfo se arregalavam de terror e ele tremia.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. (Brazil, slang) a very troublesome person or thing

   Você é um terror, garoto! ― You're naughty, boy!

   Esses bandidos são um terror ― Those criminals are terrible!

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:terror.

Derived terms

• aterrorizar
• terrorismo
• terrorista

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin terrorem.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /teˈroɾ/
• Rhymes: -oɾ
• Syllabification: te‧rror

Noun

terror m (plural terrores)

1. horror (genre)
2. terror

Derived terms

Related terms

References

Further reading

• “terror”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014

Swedish

Noun

terror c

1. terror

Declension

Derived terms

Related terms

• terrorisera
• terrorism
• terrorist