terror
/ˈtɛɹɚ/
Meaning
Intense dread, fright, or fear.
Terrorism.
A night terror.
A strict teacher who fails most of the students.
Intense dread, fright, or fear.
The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
Something or someone that causes such fear.
A night terror.
A strict teacher who fails most of the students.
Intense dread, fright, or fear.
The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
Something or someone that causes such fear.
Examples
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.
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!
The terrors of the storm
Word Forms
terrors
terrour
more terror
most 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 te