Terror

/ˈtɛɹ.ɚ/ · noun

Meaning

(countable, uncountable) Intense dread, fright, or fear..

Definitions by Sense

1. (countable, uncountable) Intense dread, fright, or fear.
2. (uncountable) The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
3. (countable) Something or someone that causes such fear.
4. (uncountable) Terrorism.
5. (pathology, countable) A night terror.
6. (Philippines, slang) A strict teacher who fails most of the students.

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.

a terror attack

the War on Terror

Synonyms for terror

Antonyms for terror

Related Words

Word Forms

• terrors
• terrour
• more terror
• most terror

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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