horror, n.
(ˈhɒrə(r))
Forms: 4–5 orrour, 5 orrowre, horreur, 6 horrure, 4–9 horrour, 6– horror.
[a. OF. orror, (h)orrour (mod.F. horreur) = Pr. and Sp. horror, It. orrore:—L. horrōr-em, f. horrēre to bristle, shudder, etc. (see horre v.). For the spelling cf. error.]
1. a. Roughness, ruggedness. (In 1382 a literalism of translation; now poet. or rhet. Cf. horrid 1.)
| 1382 Wyclif Deut. xxxii. 10 The Lord..foond hym in a deseert loond, in place of orrour [1388 ethir hidousnesse], and of waast wildernes. 1697 Dryden æneid vii. 41 Which thick with Shades, and a brown Horror, stood. 1774 Pennant Tour Scotl. in 1772. 39 The horror of precipice, broken crag or overhanging rock. |
† b. transf. Roughness or nauseousness of taste, such as to cause a shudder or thrill.
Obs.| 1477 Norton Ord. Alch. v. in Ashm. (1652) 73 Over-sharpe, too bitter, or of greate horrour. |
2. a. A shuddering or shivering; now
esp. (
Med.) as a symptom of disease.
| 1533 Elyot Cast. Helthe (1541) 52 b, Horrour or shrovelynge of the body myxt with heate. 1626 Bacon Sylva §700 Squeaking or Skriching Noise, make a Shiuering or Horrour in the Body, and set the Teeth on edge. a 1693 Aubrey Lives, Harvey (1898) I. 301 His way was to rise out of his bed and walke about his chamber in his shirt till he was pretty cool, i.e., till he began to have a horror. 1706 Phillips (ed. Kersey), Horrour..Among Physicians 'tis taken for a shivering and trembling of the Skin over the whole Body, with a Chilness after it. 1743 tr. Heister's Surg. 192 It generally seizes the Patient with a Horror or Shivering. 1822–34 Good's Study Med. (ed. 4) I. 615 The first attack generally commences with a horror. |
† b. Ruffling of surface; rippling.
Obs. (
Cf. 1.)
| a 1634 Chapman (Webster 1864), Such fresh horror as you see driven through the wrinkled waves. 1765 Antiq. in Ann. Reg. 181/1 A gentle horror glides over its [the sea's] smooth surface. |
3. a. A painful emotion compounded of loathing and fear; a shuddering with terror and repugnance; strong aversion mingled with dread; the feeling excited by something shocking or frightful. Also in weaker sense, intense dislike or repugnance. (The prevalent use at all times.)
| c 1375 Sc. Leg. Saints, Mathias 47 Gret horroure had þai alsa, For sic dremynge. 1382 Wyclif Ezek. xxxii. 10 The kyngis..with ful myche orrour shulen be agast vpon thee. c 1386 Chaucer Pars. T. ¶149 Ther shal horrour and grisly drede dwellen with-outen ende. c 1440 Promp. Parv. 371/1 Orrowre, horror. 1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 90 b, Affeccyon & loue to this present worlde, horrour & despeccyon of the worlde to come. 1602 Marston Ant. & Mel. iv. Wks. 1856 I. 54 A sodden horror doth invade my blood. 1632 J. Hayward tr. Biondi's Eromena 30 Foure bodies..whereof (to their great horror) they knew at the first sight their Mistresse and the Prince. 1697 Dryden Virg. Georg. i. 451 Deep Horrour seizes ev'ry Humane Breast. 1725 De Foe Voy. round World (1840) 192 The mountains of Andes..so frightful for their height, that it is not to be thought of without some horror. 1756 Burke Vind. Nat. Soc. Wks. 1842 I. 11 On the return of reason he began to conceive a horrour suitable to the guilt of such a murder. 1833 N. Arnott Physics (ed. 5) I. 349 What was called nature's horror of a vacuum. 1866 G. Macdonald Ann. Q. Neighb. iii. (1878) 24, I had a horror of becoming a moral policeman as much as of ‘doing church’. 1872 Darwin Emotions xii. 304 He who dreads, as well as hates a man, will feel, as Milton uses the word, a horror of him. |
b. pl. the horrors (
colloq.): a fit of horror or extreme depression;
spec. such as occurs in delirium tremens.
| 1768 Goldsm. Good-n. Man iv. Wks. (Globe) 631/2 He is coming this way all in the horrors. 1780 J. Adams in Fam. Lett. (1876) 382 London is in the horrors. Governor Hutchinson fell down dead at the first appearance of mobs. 1818 S. E. Ferrier Marriage iii. (D.), As you promise our stay shall be short, if I don't die of the horrors, I shall certainly try to make the agreeable. 1889 Boldrewood Robbery under Arms (1890) 3 He does drink, of course..the worst of it is that too much of it brings on the horrors. 1893 C. G. Leland Mem. II. 20 To be regarded as a real Bohemian vagabond..would..have given me the horrors. |
c. As
int. (usu. pl.). An exclamation indicating shock, surprise, fear, etc.
| 1879 L. Troubridge Life amongst Troubridges (1966) xi. 152 Went to Shepherd's Bush. Oh, horror—stinking underground. Ibid. 153 The train went off without us! Oh, horror, no other train to Penzance. 1893 Ladies' Home Jrnl. Feb. 6/4 Horrors!.. You don't mean that you're going to carry it any further? 1914 E. R. Burroughs Tarzan of Apes (1917) xvi. 137 Horrors! The lion was bounding along in easy leaps scarce five paces behind. 1928 ‘Brent of Bin Bin’ Up Country xvi. 284 After that was Miss Oswald—horrors, supposing she proposed too! 1973 Times Lit. Suppl. 31 Aug. 1007/3 Lord Crouch pulls strings to get..the Yard for the murder near his stately home, but horrors!—for him, anyway—when what he gets is [Inspector] Dover. |
† 4. A feeling of awe or reverent fear (without any suggestion of repugnance); a thrill of awe, or of imaginative fear.
Obs.| 1579 Fulke Heskins' Parl. 129 That sacrifice most full of horror and reuerence, where the uniuersall Lorde of all thinges is daily felt with handes. a 1670 Hacket Abp. Williams (1692) ii. 56 (D.) That super-cœlestial food in the Lord's Supper which a Christian ought not once to think of without a sacred kind of horror and reverence. 1715–20 Pope Iliad viii. 36 A reverend horror silenced all the sky. [1820 Hazlitt Lect. Dram. Lit. 321 The interest will be instantly heightened to a sort of pleasing horror.] |
5. transf. a. The quality of exciting repugnance and dread; horribleness; a quality or condition, and
concr. a thing, or person, which excites these feelings; something horrifying.
Chamber of Horrors, the name given to a room in Madame Tussaud's waxwork exhibition, containing effigies of noted criminals and the like; hence
transf. a place full of horrors.
| c 1375 Sc. Leg. Saints, Jacobus Minor 695 To þe thefys horroure alvay. 1413 Pilgr. Sowle (Caxton 1483) iii. x. 56 The grete horrour therof may not be lykened ne declared. 1489 Caxton Faytes of A. iii. xvii. 208 To putte a man in an euyl pryson and constrayne by tormentynges..is an homynable horreur. 1594 Daniel Cleopatra iii. ii, This solitary Horror where I bide. 1605 Shakes. Macb. ii. iii. 85 As from your Graues rise vp, and walke like Sprights, To countenance this horror. Ibid. v. v. 13, I haue supt full with horrors. 1748 Anson's Voy. iii. vii. 357 The Centurion, fitted for war..was the horror of these dastards. 1805 E. Fremantle in A. Fremantle Wynne Diaries (1940) 4 Mar. III. 160 He [Count Barlowsky] is a little horror. 1831 Praed Poems, Where is Miss Myrtle ii, I brought her, one morning, a rose for her brow..She told me such horrors were never worn now. 1846 E. Hall Diary 11 June in O. A. Sherrard Two Victorian Girls (1966) xvii. 162 Took the horrors for a drive, and even in the carriage Sydney and Cornelia could not behave themselves. 1849 Thackeray Pendennis I. xxxvii. 362 That collection of old fogies..ought to be cast in wax, and set up at Madame Tussaud's—..In the chamber of horrors! 1856 Amy Carlton 126, I want to see the Chamber of Horrors. It is full of wax models of the most wicked people that ever lived. 1859 Macm. Mag. Dec. 132/2 A series of magic lantern slides from some ‘chambers of horrors’, which he presumes to call the Legend of the Ages. 1861 P. B. Du Chaillu Equat. Afr. xi. (ed. 2) 144, I dreamed..of serpents that night, for they are my horror. 1889 Barrère & Leland Dict. Slang I. 235 Chamber of Horrors, the Peeresses' gallery at the House of Lords, from its being railed round as if it contained objectionable or repulsive inmates. 1891 Farmer Slang II. 69 Chamber of Horrors, sausages. 1895 R. L. Douglas in Bookman Oct. 22/2 Louis was in a large measure responsible for the horrors of the Revolution. 1899 Daily Chron. 2 Mar. 9/1 This..room.. is one of terrible interest, for the ‘flimsies’ record the lost and overdue vessels, and the place bears the gruesome and apt title of ‘Chamber of Horrors’. 1909 J. R. Ware Passing Eng. 69/2 Chamber of Horrors, the name of the corridor or repository in which Messrs Christie..locate the valueless pictures that are sent to them. 1922 Joyce Ulysses 613 He stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket. 1958 Spectator 6 June 746/2 Children adore reading about little horrors being taken down a peg. 1959 A. Huxley Let. 13 Feb. (1969) 866 Passages on infant damnation from St. Augustine... Passages on Jesus as a salesman from Bruce Barton. And so forth. A few pages of these wd constitute a stimulating Chamber of Horrors. 1959 Times Lit. Suppl. 10 July 409/2 A diary kept by an elderly horror whose name we never learn. |
b. = horror film.
| 1958 Vogue July 47 The American horrors pour out at an average of three a month: The Man without a Body, Back from the Dead, etc. 1958 Economist 6 Dec. 868/2 ‘Horror’ is a generic term covering a wide range of films whose only common link is that they all contain a monster. |
6. Comb., as
horror joke,
horror magazine,
horror-monger,
horror-mongering,
horror-photograph,
horror story;
horror-crowned,
horror-fraught,
horror-inspiring,
horror-loving,
horror-stricken,
horror-struck adjs.;
horror-strike vb. (
rare);
horror comic, a children's comic (sense B. 2) in which the principal ingredients of the pictures and stories are violence and sensationalism;
horror film,
movie,
picture, a film designed to horrify,
usu. by the depiction of violence and the supernatural.
| 1954 Time 8 Nov. 60/3 Public criticism of *horror comics. 1959 J. Cary Captive & Free lvi. 244 She had been all for the Bill putting down the horror comics, though her husband had been against it. 1964 M. Argyle Psychol. & Social Probl. iv. 51 There has been considerable public anxiety about the possible effect of television shows, films and horror comics on children. 1973 Guardian 28 Mar. 10/6 It was jokey in a horror-comic way, but I don't think horror is a reasonable reaction to a horror-comic. |
| 1851 C. L. Smith tr. Tasso v. xliv, Engirt with steel, and *horror-crowned. |
| 1936 Variety 1 July 1/5 Recently showed..*horror films and Sino-Japanese War cruelty shots. 1952 M. McCarthy Groves of Academe (1953) iii. 31 Miss Rejner and her boy-tutee..sat transfixed, as in a horror-film, watching the knob turn. 1965 Listener 18 Nov. 805/1 The connoisseur of the horror film knows instinctively that Son of Dracula will lack the blood chilling quality of Dracula. 1971 B. W. Aldiss Soldier Erect 10 My eyelids flickered like an ancient horror film, revealing acres of white-of-eye. |
| 1812 G. Colman Br. Grins, Lady of Wreck i. xviii, A moment *horror-fraught. |
| 1963 Auden Dyer's Hand 372 A few years ago, there was a rage in New York for telling ‘*Horror Jokes’. |
| 1909 Westm. Gaz. 1 May 13/2 The same *horror-loving multitude flocks to its haunts of pleasure. |
| 1939 R. Chandler Big Sleep x. 75 A fresh-faced kid was reading a *horror magazine. |
| 1797 A. M. Bennett Beggar Girl (1813) IV. 225 Her reality might have set the best *horror-monger of the age at a distance. |
| 1887 Saintsbury Hist. Elizab. Lit. xi. (1890) 425 A specimen of *horror-mongering. |
| 1965 Mrs. L. B. Johnson White House Diary 3 June (1970) 280 Tall plants called gorgonian..for all the world like those plants you see in *horror movies. 1972 ‘R. Crawford’ Whip Hand i. iii. 11 A horror movie, vehicle for a Hollywood godling who had been in his grave for a decade. |
| 1954 Koestler Invis. Writing xxxi. 333 He insisted on adding to the book a supplement of *horror-photographs on glossy paper. |
| 1937 New Yorker 9 Jan. 13/2 Mr. Arthur L. Mayer took over the..theatre, put in *horror pictures (zombies and draculas), and he has made it pay every week. 1960 Times 14 Jan. 6/3 The world-wide success of the so-called ‘horror’ pictures made by Hammer Films. |
| 1937 E. Snow Red Star over China i. i. 22 A torrent of *horror-stories about Red atrocities. 1963 Listener 7 Mar. 428/1 The horror story afforded scope for the more primitive fears and desires that had gradually been squeezed out of the English novel. 1970 Nature 5 Dec. 900/2 Both argued that the ‘horror stories’ of genetic engineering are completely out of the question, at least in the foreseeable future. |
| 1805 E. de Acton Nuns of Desert I. 41 The *horror-stricken witnesses. 1818 Cobbett Pol. Reg. XXXIII. 41 She seemed horror-stricken when some of her own agents..took the liberty to trade in human blood. 1876 Black Madcap V. v, He looked so horror-stricken that she nearly laughed. |
| 1811 Coleridge Own Times (1850) 906 Though [they should] attempt to *horror-strike us with the signature of Cambro-Hibern-Anglo-Scotus! |
| 1814 Jane Austen Mansf. Park III. vi. 134 William and Fanny were *horror-struck at the idea. 1821 J. W. Croker in Diary 14 Aug. (1884), He looked horrorstruck and stopped short. 1857 Ruskin Pol. Econ. Art 20 We should be utterly horror-struck at the idea. 1953 R. Lehmann Echoing Grove 23 Horror-struck, they continued to stand watching. |
Hence
† ˈhorror,
ˈhorrorize vbs. trans., to affect with horror, horrify;
ˈhorrorful,
ˈhorrorish,
ˈhorrorous,
ˈhorrorsome adjs., full of, characterized by, or producing horror;
† horrorie, horror.
| 1642 Sir E. Dering Sp. on Relig. 85 Truly (Sir) it *horrors me to thinke of this. |
| 1600 Tourneur Transf. Metamorph. Prol. 10 The ecchoized sounds of *horrorie. |
| 1847 J. Mackintosh Diary 10 June in Macleod Mem. (1854) 124 Pensive but not *horrorish. |
| 1820 Southey in Life (1850) V. 19 In my next letter I shall probably *horrorize you about these said verses. 1856 T. Gwynne Young Singleton xv. 250 The corpse lay..with the same horrorized yet defying expression of face. |
| 1756 Gentl. Mag. XXVI. 254 That they should gall a reeking wound, and produce *horrorous effects. |
| 1593 Nashe Christ's T. (1613) 77 Some part of thy..description would I borrow, to make it more *horrorsome. |