▪ I. terror, n.
(ˈtɛrə(r))
Also 4–6 -oure, 6–9 -our.
[ME. terrour, a. F. terreur (14th c.):—L. terrōr-em, nom. terror, f. terrēre to frighten: see -or 1.]
1. The state of being terrified or greatly frightened; intense fear, fright, or dread. Also, with a and pl., an instance of this.
| c 1375 Sc. Leg. Saints xxxiii. (George) 701 He..but rednes ore terroure Of goddis son wes confessoure. 1500–20 Dunbar Ballat of Passion 137 For grit terrour of Chrystis deid, The erde did trymmil quhar I lay. 1560 Bible (Genev.) Ps. lv. 4 The terrors [Coverd. fear] of death are fallen vpon me. 1605 Shakes. Lear iv. ii. 12 It is the Cowish terror of his spirit That dares not vndertake. 1615 G. Sandys Trav. 20 By little and little [they] descended as their terrors forsooke them. 1657 Thornley tr. Longus' Daphnis & Chloe 46 Pan sends a Terrour upon the Methymnæans. 1711 Addison Spect. No. 7 ¶3 This Remark struck a pannick Terror into several who were present. a 1763 Shenstone Ess. xiii. Wks. 1765 II. 51 The gloom of night..was productive of terrour. 1794 Godwin Cal. Williams 236 The terrors with which I was seized..were extreme. 1837 Whewell Hist. Induct. Sc. (1857) I. 227 Showed hesitation, alarm, increasing terrour. 1871 R. Ellis Catullus lxiv. 338 You shall a son see born that knows not terror, Achilles. |
2. transf. a. The action or quality of causing dread; terrific quality, terribleness;
spec. this action or quality in fiction,
esp. in
novel (or tale) of terror; also
concr. a thing or person that excites terror; something terrifying.
| 1528 Roy Rede me (Arb.) 41 Threatnynge with fearfull terroure. 1560 J. Daus tr. Sleidane's Comm. 209 He vseth hys name sometime, only for a clooke and a terrour. 1667 Milton P.L. ii. 704 So spake the grieslie terrour. 1712 Addison Spect. No. 333 ¶22 The Messiah appears cloathed with so much Terrour and Majesty. 1788 Gibbon Decl. & F. l. (1846) V. 16 The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert. 1814 Scott Ld. of Isles vi. xvi, Clearing war's terrors from his eye. a 1832 G. Crabbe Posthumous Tales xv, in Poet. Wks. (1834) VIII. 205 Yet tales of terror are her dear delight, All in the wintry storm to read at night. 1841 Emerson Ess., Prudence Wks. (Bohn) I. 100 The terrors of the storm. 1864 Burton Scot Abr. I. ii. 61 He became..the terror of all the well-disposed within the district. 1917 D. Scarborough Supernatural in Mod. Eng. Fiction i. 6 And so the Gothic novel came into being. Gothic is here used to designate the eighteenth-century novel of terror dealing with mediaeval materials. 1921 E. Birkhead (title) The tale of terror: a study of the Gothic romance. 1977 M. Ashley Who's who in Horror & Fantasy Fiction 103 His masterpiece of terror was The Castle of Ehrenstein (1854), a superb portrayal of a ghost-ridden castle. |
b. Trivially. A person (
occas., a thing) fancied to excite terror;
esp. a troublesome child;
holy terror: see
holy a. 4 c.
| 1883, etc. [see holy a. 4 c]. 1889 Harper's Mag. May 933/1 That bright boy..who was a terror six months ago. 1892 Lady R. Churchill Let. 10 Jan. in R. S. Churchill Winston S. Churchill (1967) I. Compan. i. v. 305 Papa is very well & in good spirits but his beard is a ‘terror’. 1900 G. Swift Somerley 14 There we kept up the reputation of ‘little terrors’ that we had earned with Miss Graten. 1908 G. Sanger 70 Yrs. a Showman xvii. 58 Brumley..was a bit of a terror in his way, being a drunken bully. 1925 S. Lewis Martin Arrowsmith vi. 63 She's an old terror. If she found a child like you wandering around here she'd drag you out by the ear. 1953 K. Tennant Joyful Condemned xxxii. 311 It wasn't your fault. René was always a terror. You did what you could. 1979 A. McCowen Young Gemini 25 At school I was known as a terror and went looking for fights. |
3. king of terrors, Death personified.
| 1611 Bible Job xviii. 14 His confidence..shall bring him to the king of terrours [1560 King of feare; Coverd. very fearfulnesse shall brynge him to the kynge]. 1682 J. Flavel Fear 9 Job calls it the king of terrors..or the most terrible of terribles. 1794 Godwin Cal. Williams xxiv, It surely is not worse to encounter the king of terrors in health,..than to encounter him already half subdued by sickness and suffering. 1827–47 Hare Guesses (1874) 88 It is the only voice which can triumph over Death, and turn the King of terrours into an angel of light. |
4. reign of terror, a state of things in which the general community live in dread of death or outrage;
esp. (with capital initials)
French Hist. the period of the First Revolution from about March 1793 to July 1794, called also
the Terror,
the Red Terror, when the ruling faction remorselessly shed the blood of persons of both sexes and of all ages and conditions whom they regarded as obnoxious. Hence, without article or
pl., the use of organized intimidation, terrorism.
Hence also
White Terror, applied to the counter-revolution that followed the
Red Terror, and to other periods of remorseless repression in various countries;
the terror is also used simply for a similar period of repression. See also
Red and
White Terror at the first element.
| 1801 Hel. M. Williams Sk. Fr. Rep. I. xviii. 231 This superb monument had suffered most from the reign of terror. 1831 Wexford Herald 11 June 2/3 The reign of terror—of Terryaltism. 1848 Geo. Eliot Let. 8 Mar. (1954) I. 255 The Glasgow riots are more serious, but one cannot believe in a Scotch Reign of Terror in these days. c 1870 Miniature xi. in The Sibyl 1 Apr. (1893), When the Terror, with hungry throat Ravished the homes of the wide Touraine. 1877 Morley Crit. Misc. Ser. ii. 132 A White Terror succeeded the Red Terror. 1883 Fortn. Rev. 1 Nov. 701 The red terror of the French Jacobins is insignificant by the side of the white terror of Ferdinand VII. 1891 Ld. Rosebery Pitt xi. 186 On the one side there were murders, roastings, plunder of arms, and a reign of terror [in Ireland in 1797]. 1893 Tablet 9 Dec. 934 A little Terror reigned over the provincial commune. 1920 Glasgow Herald 7 May 9 It was admitted that outrages were committed against the Socialists [in Hungary], but it was denied that a ‘terror’ existed. 1937 Koestler Spanish Testament vi. 132 They had neither the inclination nor the need to terrorise the population, to make warning examples, to safeguard the territory behind the lines by the application of methods of Terror. 1951 H. Arendt Burden of Our Time i. i. 6 Terror as we know it today strikes without any preliminary provocation. 1966 G. Greene Comedians iii. 100 The Trianon soufflé au Grand Marnier was famous for a time, until the terror started [in Haiti] and the American Mission left. 1970 G. Jackson Let. 4 Apr. in Soledad Brother (1971) 212 All times of the day or night our cells were being invaded by the goon squad: you wake up, take your licks, get skin-searched... This treatment, fear therapy, was not accorded to all however... Mostly it came down on us. Rehabilitational terror. 1977 P. Johnson Enemies of Society xviii. 241 Thanks to their use of terror, they [sc. the Assassins] often controlled local authorities, and forced governments into compliance or impotence. 1978 Encounter July 15/1 Anyone who cannot see and appreciate the true difference between Russia today and Russia at the height of the Stalinist terror has a very poor idea of one or other of these phenomena. |
5. Comb. a. attributive, as
terror-drop,
terror-fit,
terror-gleam,
terror-novel,
terror-romance; (in sense 4)
terror act,
terror group,
terror organization,
terror régime,
terror tactics.
b. objective (with
pr. pples.), as
terror-breathing,
terror-causing,
terror-giving,
terror-inspiring,
terror-preaching,
terror-stirring,
terror-striking, etc.,
adjs.;
c. instrumental (with
pa. pples.), as
terror-crazed,
terror-fraught,
terror-haunted,
terror-mingled,
terror-ridden,
terror-riven,
terror-shaken,
terror-smitten,
terror-stiffened,
terror-stricken,
terror-struck, etc.,
adjs.; so
terror-strike vb. d. Special
Combs. terror-bombing, intensive and indiscriminate bombing designed to frighten a country into surrender;
terror raid, a bombing raid of this nature.
| 1946 Koestler Thieves in Night 243 While the usual *terror acts continued, the Jewish representative bodies issued their usual protests. |
| 1941 Reader's Digest June 58/2 It must be remembered that this government today is Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler and a few others—men who..ordered the *terror bombing of Rotterdam last summer and of London last winter. 1945 Time 26 Feb. 32/1 Terror bombing of German cities was deliberate military policy. 1959 R. Collier City that wouldn't Die ii. 27 To Sperrle the primary consideration was always that the pilot should see his target;..a Nuremberg tribunal absolved him of terror bombing. |
| 1598 Drayton Heroic Ep., Mortimer to Q. Isabel 114 Curses..Through the sterne throte of *terror-breathing warre. |
| 1922 Joyce Ulysses 384 The *terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour. |
| 1873 W. Carleton Burning of Chicago viii, The panic-struck, *terror-crazed city. |
| 1897 P. Warung Tales Old Regime 184 [Convicts] who sweated *terror-drops beneath their stamped blankets. |
| 1868 Ld. Houghton Select. fr. Wks. 199 At doubt and *terror-fit he only laughed. |
| 1868 Farrar Seekers i. vii. (1875) 98 All this *terror-fraught interspace between heaven and earth. |
| a 1743 Savage Public Spirit 127 Instant we catch her *terror-giving cares. |
| 1977 P. Johnson Enemies of Society xviii. 242 The diabolism of Stavrogin, who preaches the doctrine that the *terror-group can only be united by fear and moral depravity. |
| 1844 Longfellow Norman Baron vii, The lays they chanted Reached the chamber *terror-haunted. |
| 1839 Poe William Wilson in Gift 235 In a remote and *terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure. 1854 Grace Greenwood Haps & Mishaps 91 Enrolment in this honourable terror-inspiring, omnipresent corps. |
| 1799 Campbell Pleas. Hope ii. 255 Nature hears, with *terror-mingled trust, The shock that hurls her fabric in the dust. |
| 1917 D. Scarborough Supernatural in Mod. Eng. Fiction i. 6 The *terror novel proper is generally conceded to begin with his [sc. Horace Walpole's] Romantic curiosity, The Castle of Otranto. 1972 P. Haining Gt. Brit. Tales of Terror I. 117 William Beckford, author of the great Oriental terror-novel, Vathek. |
| 1977 Belfast Tel. 22 Feb. 5/7 Growing police and Army success against the *terror organisations. |
| 1630 Drayton Noah 225 This good man, this *terror-preaching Noy. |
| 1945 Ann. Reg. 1944 3 Lord Cranborne..pointed out that the Royal Air Force had never indulged in purely *terror raids like those perpetrated by the Luftwaffe. 1977 J. Wainwright Pool of Tears 208 Dresden..That was a terror raid... A town turned into a blow-torch. |
| 1952 Koestler Arrow in Blue viii. 68 Admiral Horthy established the first semi-Fascist *terror régime in post-war Europe. |
| 1931 R. L. Mégroz Conrad's Mind & Method x. 237 The ‘Gothic’ *terror-romance of the eighteenth century. 1972 P. Haining Gt. Brit. Tales of Terror I. 477 From the later work comes the following grim story which contains much of that chilling atmosphere which made the Gothic terror-romance so widely popular in its time. |
| 1887 Kipling Departm. Ditties (1888) 21 Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my *terror-stiffened hair. |
| c 1611 Chapman Iliad xxii. 320 Then all the Greekes..admir'd his *terror-stirring lim. |
| 1831 Poe Poems (ed. 2) 75 There the..clouds do fly..Through the *terror-stricken sky. 1845 Hirst Com. Mammoth 16 Our terror-stricken warriors quailed. 1871 Macduff Mem. Patmos iii. 35 He cowers like a terror-stricken child. |
| 1611 W. Barksted Hiren (1876) 74 So her beames did *terror-strike his sight. |
| 1598 Drayton Heroic Ep., Owen Tudor to Q. Kath. 23 His dreadfull *terror-striking name. |
| 1799 Ht. Lee Canterb. T., Frenchm. T. (ed. 2) I. 270 She found herself alone,..*terror-struck, bewildered. |
| 1974 Encycl. Brit. Micropædia V. 427/2 A ‘provisional’ wing [of the IRA]..comprising the younger, militant majority committed to the use of *terror tactics. |
| 1824 Lamb Elia Ser. ii. Blakesmoor in H—shire, A sneaking curiosity, *terror-tainted. |
Hence
ˈterrorful,
ˈterrorsome adjs., full of or fraught with terror, terrifying.
| 1870 Contemp. Rev. XIV. 491 The points..show themselves..with that dark jaggedness and terrorful meaning which [etc.]. 1890 Leeds Merc. 3 Feb. 5/1 A writer..makes it terrorsome by the following anecdote. |
▪ II. ˈterror, v. Obs. or
arch. [f. prec. n.] trans. To strike with terror, to terrify. Also
absol.| 1635 Heywood Hierarch. viii. 515 They, terror'd with these words, demand his name. 1655 Fuller Ch. Hist. iv. ii. Ded., A Law..as all other penal Statutes intended but to terrour. 1878 P. W. Wyatt Hardrada 3 The terror'd heart of Tostig. |