HORROR • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Horror

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/hˈɔrər/ Listen

noun

Horror n.

A bristling up; a rising into roughness; tumultuous movement. (Archaic) "Such fresh horror as you see driven through the wrinkled waves."

A shaking, shivering, or shuddering, as in the cold fit which precedes a fever; in old medical writings, a chill of less severity than a rigor, and more marked than an algor.

A painful emotion of fear, dread, and abhorrence; a shuddering with terror and detestation; the feeling inspired by something frightful and shocking. "How could this, in the sight of heaven, without horrors of conscience be uttered?"

That which excites horror or dread, or is horrible; gloom; dreariness. "Breathes a browner horror on the woods."

The horrors, delirium tremens. (Colloq.)

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Etymology of 'Horror'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Horror" Quotes from Famous Books

... back part of his head, and was almost at the same moment shot through the heart. He fell among the horses that about the same time were killed, and presented to his afflicted daughters and fellow-travellers, who were witnesses of the awful occurrence, a spectacle of horror which we need ...

— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous

... the pirate of its hidden hoard; Life! 'twas the ship he sailed to seek it in, And Death is but the pilot come aboard, Methinks I see him smile a boy's glad smile On maddened winds and waters, reefs unknown, As thunders in the sail the dread typhoon, And in the surf the shuddering timbers groan; Horror ahead, and Death beside the wheel: Then—spreading stillness of the broad lagoon, And lap of waters ...

— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... the depths of his immeasurable tenderness. It appealed to that Pity which, as every one has noticed, is a fundamental attribute of the national Russian character. In "The Portrait," which is partly written in the minute manner of Balzac, and partly with the imaginative fantastic horror of Poe and Hoffmann, we have the two sides of Gogol's nature clearly reflected. Into this strange story he has also indicated two of the great guiding principles of his life: his intense democratic sympathies, ...

— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... white, dodged to the shelter of a tree, whence he saw with horror that the sow had got clear of the other two men. At this their courage evaporated, and all three fled for their lives along the Watling Street. When they came to Richmond and told their tale of the ...

— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... moment his eyes fell on her, stopped as if suddenly arrested by an invisible hand; his eyes expressed horror and surprise, his dark face grew darker. Rachel quickly recovered. "I will call again," she murmured, and passing him swiftly, noiselessly, left the room, ...

— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

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