Thriller
nounA novel, film, or play with an exciting, suspenseful plot, often involving crime, espionage, or danger.
How to spell thriller
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce thriller
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does thriller mean?
- nounA novel, film, or play with an exciting, suspenseful plot, often involving crime, espionage, or danger.
Thriller in a sentence
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She stayed up past midnight finishing the spy thriller.
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The new courtroom thriller topped the box office this weekend.
Where does thriller come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The word grows out of the verb 'thrill', which descends from the Old English 'thyrlian', meaning 'to pierce' or 'to bore a hole through'. That same root survives in the old word 'thirl' and is hiding inside 'nostril', which originally meant 'nose-hole'. Over the centuries the idea of being physically pierced softened into being pierced by a strong feeling, so by the late 1500s 'thrill' had come to mean stirring someone with a sudden wave of emotion or excitement. The noun 'thriller', formed by adding the agent suffix '-er' to mean 'a thing that thrills', appeared in the late nineteenth century and quickly attached itself to gripping, suspenseful stories. The double 'l' that trips up some writers is simply the original consonant of 'thrill' carried straight through into the longer word.
How the word is built
- thrill (root: to excite)
- -er (noun suffix: a thing that does)
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