horrificity
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Etymology: From horrific + -ity.
Senses: examples: text: As for humor in horror, I'm beginning to think that it's almost necessary to make for an effective tale; speaking for myself, I've noticed that if I'm reading or watching something that's unrelentingly grim and focused too tightly on the general horribleness (horrificity? horribility?) that's going on, I tend to draw back from it, and it doesn't really GET me.
ref: 1992 October 18, mary virginia burke, “anthologies anyone?”, in alt.horror (Usenet), archived from the original on 04 Apr 2024:
text: He attempts in vain to convey to the robbers that his nasal passages are impenetrably blocked. They duct-tape his mouth. I will not even attempt to approximate the horrificity of the death's description; I could not do it anything resembling justice. Such writing. Then there's an equally if not more horrific story of a guy who dies by shooting up Drano.
ref: 1998 June 6, Amzug [pseudonym], “The Music of Falling To Sleep With a Drippy Nose **SUGAR**”, in rec.arts.poems (Usenet), archived from the original on 04 Apr 2024:
text: > But this whole discussion assumes that "ISO C" will solve the problems
> of portability, which is not the case. A study of the Inform source will
> demonstrate some of the challenges involved in writing portable C,
Most notably, the horrificity[1] of allocating RAM on various platforms. […] [1] That's a word now. Perhaps. It's better than horrificality would have been, anyway.
ref: 2000 September 21, Jonadab the Unsightly One [pseudonym], “Poll: Programming language or adventure scripting language?”, in rec.arts.int-fiction (Usenet), archived from the original on 04 Apr 2024:
text: Actually, I have a slashfic that I'm writing for Mellie that will, I trust, plumb new levels of horrificity. I mean, *I'm* appalled by it.
ref: 2000 October 22, Jess Nevins, “oh my god”, in rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc (Usenet), archived from the original on 04 Apr 2024:
text: It's very hard to suspend your disbelief. It's also very hard to suspend your disbelief when it comes to football, and further when it comes to Ligue 1, further still when it comes to these two clubs, and right until the very Nth when it comes to this fixture. But given that we're not about to change the horrificity of the world, we may as well have a shy and see if we can somehow derive ourselves some enjoyment. Go!
ref: 2013 September 22, Daniel Harris, “PSG v Monaco – as it happened”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 Sep 2013:
text: It's very easy to get stuck into sportsfolk - they live our dreams, for nice money. But, although they don't fail on purpose, it's reasonable to expect them to compete with honour, zest and courage. Today, they did not; rather, they produced a signature performance of profound and unshocking horrificity.
ref: 2014 May 25, Dan Lucas, Daniel Harris, “England v Sri Lanka: second ODI – as it happened”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 May 2014:
text: Pause or reflection, the significance of a tragic news event may not come from its horrificity or fatality as from its emotionality and symbolism.
ref: 2015, Emenike Ezedani, “The Chibok Climax of a Terror Tragedy”, in Boko Haram: Chibok Girls and All Matters Nigeria Security, [Australia], →ISBN, page 3:
text: They had and have too much invested in the rival narrative about something much worse to worry over decades from now than a mere energy crisis today. Accordingly, as that crisis begins to intensify, so too must their stress on the apallingness,^([sic]) the horrificity, of the environmental Armageddon to come.
ref: 2022 October, James Bowman, “The media: Hobgoblins”, in The New Criterion, volume 41, number 2, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, page 55, column 2:
text: She then pulls the veil off the soapy dead face, the blanket that was put over the cold countenance, and after having seen the dead woman in all her horrificity, she decides that the next time she’d make the face all by herself all the way from scratch.
ref: 2024, Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Gitta Honegger, chapter 26, in The Children of the Dead (The Margellos World Republic of Letters), New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 354:
synonyms: horrificality
horrificness
glosses: The quality of being horrific.