terror
/ˈtɛɹɚ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.26 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
Uncountable
name
The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
name
Any specific one of several historical reigns of terror.
Example Sentences
- "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"
- "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."
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 terrēre (“to frighten, terrify”), from Old Latin tr̥reō, from Proto-Italic *trozeō, from Proto-Indo-European *tre- (“to shake”), *tres- (“to tremble”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈtɛɹɚ/
- British English: /ˈtɛɹə/
Usage
Inflected Forms
terrors (plural)
terrour (alternative, obsolete)
more terror (comparative)
most terror (superlative)