horror

Etymology

From Middle English horer, horrour, from Old French horror, from Latin horror (“a bristling, a shaking, trembling as with cold or fear, terror”), from horrere (“to bristle, shake, be terrified”). Displaced native Old English ōga.

noun

1. (countable, uncountable) An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.
   Their swarthy Hosts wou'd darken all our Plains, / Doubling the native Horror of the War, / And making Death more grim. 1712, Joseph Addison, Cato: A tragedy, published 1750, page 44
2. (countable, uncountable) Something horrible; that which excites horror.
   I saw many horrors during the war.
   The Home Magazine for July (Binghamton and New York) contains ‘The Patriots' War Chant,’ a poem by Douglas Malloch; ‘The Story of the War,’ by Theodore Waters; ‘A Horseman in the Sky,’ by Ambrose Bierce, with a portrait of Mr. Bierce, whose tales of horror are horrible of themselves, not as war is horrible; ‘A Yankee Hero,’ by W. L. Calver; ‘The Warfare of the Future,’ by Louis Seemuller; ‘Florence Nightingale,’ by Susan E. Dickenson, with two rare portraits, etc. July 3, 1898, Philadelphia Inquirer, page 22
   Could there be stories with more horror than these? 2009, Devin Watson, Horror Screenwriting
3. (countable, uncountable) Intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence.
   “Mrs. Yule's chagrin and horror at what she called her son's base ingratitude knew no bounds ; at first it was even thought that she would never get over it. […] ” 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 1, in The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace
4. (uncountable) A genre of fiction designed to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense.
   Those who enjoy horror, stories overflowing with blood and black mystery, will be grateful to Richard Marsh for writing ‘The Beetle.’ February 11, 1917, New York Times, Book reviews, page 52
5. (countable) An individual work in this genre.
   […] there were hastily produced B movies, such as the peplums, the spaghetti westerns, the detective stories, the horrors. 2006, Pierluigi on Cinema
6. (countable, colloquial) A nasty or ill-behaved person; a rascal or terror.
   The neighbour's kids are a pack of little horrors!
7. (informal) An intense anxiety or a nervous depression; often the horrors.
8. (in the plural, informal) Delirium tremens.