terror
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɛɹ.ɚ/
ipa: /tɛɚ/
ipa: /ˈtɛ.ɹə/
ipa: /ˈte.ɹə/
ipa: /ˈtɛ.ɹəɹ/
note: Philadelphia, merry–Murray merger
ipa: /ˈtʌ.ɹɚ/
rhymes: -ɛɹə(ɹ)
rhymes: -ɛə(ɹ)
homophone: tare
homophone: tear stripped-by-parse_pron_post_template_fn
homophone: terra
homophone: Terra (both non-rhotic)
homophone: tearer (Mary–marry–merry merger)
Forms: form: terrors
form: terrour
Etymology: From late Middle English terrour, from Old French terreur f (“terror, fear, dread”), from Latin terror m (“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”).
Senses: examples: text: The terrors with which I was seized […] were extreme.
ref: 1794, William Godwin, Things as they are; or, The adventures of Caleb:
text: "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."
ref: 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
text: 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.
ref: 1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 9:
synonyms: word: fear
word: afraidness
glosses: Intense dread, fright, or fear.
examples: ref: 1921, Edith Birkhead, The tale of terror: a study of the Gothic romance:
glosses: The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
examples: text: 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!
ref: 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, [Philadelphia, Pa.]: Published by Hopkins and Earle, no. 170, Market Street, published 1808, →OCLC, page 474:
text: The terrors of the storm
ref: 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
glosses: Something or someone that causes such fear.
examples: text: a terror attack
text: the War on Terror
text: 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.
ref: 2019 July 15, Greg Afinogenov, “The Jewish Case for Open Borders”, in Jewish Currents, number Summer 2019:
glosses: Terrorism.
topics: medicine
pathology
sciences
glosses: A night terror.
Synonyms: word: horror
word: terror
Hypernyms: word: fear
Derived terms: agroterror
antiterror
balance of terror
bioterror
counterterror
cyberterror
ecoterror
holy terror
megaterror
narcoterror
night terror
nonterror
pterror
red terror
reign of terror
saffron terror
sleep terror
stochastic terror
terrification
terror bird
terror-bomb
terrorbomb
terror bomb
terror bombing
terror-bombing
terror cell
terrorcore
terrorful
terrorise
terrorism
terrorist
terroristic
terrorize
terrorized
terrorless
terrorsome
terrorsploitation
terror-stricken
terrorstricken
terrorstruck
white terror
yellow terror
Related terms: word: in terrorem
word: terrible
word: terrific
word: terrify
word: terrorism
word: terrorist
word: alarm
word: consternation
word: dismay
word: dread
word: fright
word: panic
word: frighten
word: Don't Panic on Wikipedia.Wikipedia