Horror

How to spell horror

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce horror

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does horror mean?

1. nounAn intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.
2. nounA genre of film, fiction, or entertainment intended to frighten or unsettle.

Horror in a sentence

• She watched in horror as the car skidded toward the wall.

• He rented three classic horror films for the weekend.

• The report described the horror of the famine in plain detail.

• The festival featured a panel on modern horror writing.

Where does horror come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Horror comes from the Latin noun horror, which named a shuddering or bristling of the skin, the physical reaction of hair standing on end. It was built on the verb horrere, meaning literally 'to bristle' or 'to tremble', the same sensation we still call goosebumps. English took the word in the 1300s by way of Old French, where it first carried the sense of a feeling of awe or dread before settling into its modern meaning of intense fear and disgust. The same root gives us 'horrid', 'horrible', and 'horrendous', all describing things that make one shudder. The doubled 'r' in the middle is the usual stumble: the spelling keeps both r's from the Latin, even though the second syllable is an unstressed schwa that gives no clue.

How the word is built

• horr- (from horrere: to bristle, to shudder)
• -or (noun suffix denoting a state or quality)