terror
/ˈtɛrə
/- Fearing a curse, the townspeople fled in terror as soon as the weather broke.
- I have lived those years both in dread of attending the party and in terror of missing it.
- In fact, it's surprising how little you notice when you've got your eyes firmly shut and you're screaming in terror.
Synonyms
- Swindon magistrates heard they had waged a campaign of terror in the past six months, causing mayhem for shoppers and staff.
- Several documents reflected the terror of the late 1930s and are in the form of denunciations.
- You don't use weapons of terror on people you are intending to liberate.
- They were being manufactured for unlawful ends to wreak violence through terror.
- They are rejected by relatives who are reminded of the terrors committed by the Janjaweed every time they look at their small faces.
- The latest news from the terror front is hardly all grim.
- At nineteen, Jeremiah McAuley was a thief and the terror of the New York waterfront.
- Bumped into old East Londoner Peter Dyter - a second year who was the terror of Merriman new boys.
- They were the terrors of every 7 - Eleven parking lot, the most feared guests at every house party.
Synonyms
- Thankfully, my own little terrors decided to play fair on New Year's Day and let me have a bit of a lie-in until 8.45 am.
- The three Mexican terrors know and respect the Belfast man, who lives and trains in the boxing crossroads of Las Vegas.
Synonyms
Phrases
have (or hold) no terrors for someone
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French terrour, from Latin terror, from terrere 'frighten'.
Like terrible (Late Middle English), terror comes from Latin terrere ‘to frighten’ and goes back to medieval times. The Terror was the period of the French Revolution, from about March 1793 to July 1794, marked by extreme repression and bloodshed. The expression reign of terror, which may now be applied to any brutal exercise of power, was originally coined to describe this time. Terrorist also has links with this period, as the word was originally used to describe the Jacobins, the revolutionary group who were responsible for the repression and executions of the Terror. Terrible once meant ‘causing terror or awe’, a meaning reflected in the name of the feared 16th-century tsar of Russia Ivan the Terrible. The weakened sense ‘very bad, appalling’ gradually evolved from the start of the 17th century. Today parents talk of the terrible twos, a period in a child's development around the age of two that often involves defiant or challenging behaviour. The term is first found in the title of a film produced in 1950 for the Department of National Health and Welfare in Canada, called The Terrible Twos and the Trusting Threes.