Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Arousing or tending to arouse horror; dreadful: "War is beyond all words horrible” ( Winston S. Churchill).
- adj. Very unpleasant; disagreeable.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Exciting or tending to excite horror; dreadful; terrible: as, a horrible sight; horrible cruelty; a horrible story.
- Hideous; shocking; extremely repulsive: as, horrible deformity; a horrible smell.
- Synonyms Execrable, Abominable, etc. (see nefarious); frightful, fearful, horrid, awful, revolting.
Wiktionary
- n. A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.
- n. A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles.
- adj. Causing horror; terrible; shocking.
- adj. Tremendously wrong or errant.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Exciting, or tending to excite, horror or fear; dreadful; terrible; shocking; hideous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. provoking horror
Etymologies
- First attested in Middle English (alternately as horrible and orrible) in 1303: from Old French horrible, from Latin horribilis, from horr(ēre) ("bristle with fear; shudder; stand on end; tremble") + -ibilis ("-ible"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin horribilis, from horrēre, to tremble. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Oh, let me tell thee allmore than this, something still more horrible, more horrible!”
“Earlier Tuesday, Italy recalled its ambassador to Syria, citing what it called the "horrible repression of the civilian population.”
Voice of America: UN Debates Resolution Condemning Syria As Unrest Continues
“ANDERSON: Marc ` s struggles began with what he describes as a horrible childhood.”
“ANDERSON: Marc ` s struggles began with what we describes as a horrible childhood.”
“The real irony is that right after having what they defined as a horrible experience with the blogs i.e., people were mean, the Post decides to embrace "the blogs" by nuzzling up to its worst elements, right-winger bloggers.”
“McCourt, sitting beside his son, also said he feels it's unfair for the league to assert control over his property based on turmoil in his personal life, which he described as "horrible.”
“The divorced dad has two young daughters and what he calls a horrible dating life, some of which will be shown to”
“On Wednesday, Cohen candidly discussed what he called a horrible period in his life with CBS”
“Chiarelli says Fort Campbell has the most aggressive suicide prevention program in the Army, but that has not stopped what he calls a horrible spike - 11 suicides at this one base since the first of the year.”
“It sounds like they may be training to prepare for that type of operation in an Afgan or Iraqi village - nonetheless, it is still horrible from a public relations perspective - they either need to better explain the purpose and intent of the training or find a better location for it.”
Carroll National Guard To Conduct Door To Door Gun Confiscation Drills in Arcadia, Iowa......
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘horrible’.
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Beautiful and Ugly
Beautiful, attractive, well-formed
Ugly, unattractive, malformedadorable, alluring, angelic, appealing, appetizing, attractive, beaming, beauteous, beautiful, becoming, beguiling, bewitching and 180 more...
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Describing the Taste of Foods
yummy, zesty, piquant, pungent, sharp, spicy, poignant, delicious, ambrosial, appetizing, delectable, heavenly and 194 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
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Inner B
Words with the letter b within the word, not just as the initial or last letter.
remember, maybe, able, unable, nimble, cable, reusable, thimble, cymbal, capable, tremble, enable and 143 more...
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The "dark" things
grave, dead, death, die, died, dies, murder, murdered, murderer, murders, murdering, murderous and 115 more...
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Setting the Scene: Dark and Dreary
Words that lend to the dark and dreary atmosphere of gothic literature.
dark, dreary, shroud, shrouded, veiled, skeleton, skeletal, dead, death, murky, gloomy, lugubrious and 274 more...
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grassdog's Words
schadenfreude, sanguine, nefarious, verisimilitude, antediluvian, salacious, obfuscate, plethora, cacophony, defenestration, vacillate, blasphemy and 478 more...
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TT3 Lesson 35
aircraft, aboard, female, not at all, complex, male, would rather, could do with, chilly, suit yourself, smuggle, joke and 38 more...
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TN5 Lesson 60
reception, soon, dressed, sweetheart, noticed, nightgown, evening gown, lobby, water fountain, left-hand, right-hand, receptionist and 22 more...
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"ble"
fallible, palpable, irascible, suasible, persuasible, commendable, admirable, dissoluble, habitable, imitable, tolerable, navigable and 21 more...
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Christmas Pageant Chapter Five
Vocabulary for Chapter Five of the Best Christmas Pageant Ever
myrrh, stable, retire, honor, sly, antenna, bureau, vengeance, ancestor, villian, horrible, carpenter
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Words I Overuse
These are the words that I need to replace in my conversational vocabularly. It will be a struggle for me, but exciting for my friends and family.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for horrible.
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