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horror

noun

Simple meaning

An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

hawrer

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈhɔɹɚ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. countableuncountable

    An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.

  2. Intense and profound fear

  3. countableuncountable

    Intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence.

  4. uncountable

    A genre of fiction designed to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense.

  5. countable

    An individual work in this genre.

  6. countablecolloquial

    A nasty or ill-behaved person; a rascal or terror.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: An intense distressing emotion of fear or repugnance.

In this sense, horror is a very strong, expressive word and reaches for fear at its strongest, so mild worry is well below it.

Emotional tone
Strongly negative
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Very strong
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Strongly negative / painful
Usage feel
Everyday but emotionally strong

Where it naturally appears

  • Personal/emotional discussion
  • Literature/storytelling

Usage note

Horror is emotionally heavy: it suggests deep or lasting feeling, not a passing mood, so it can overstate a small reaction.

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use horror

  • “The painting that others found so beautiful was a horror to him.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

horror filmhorror storyhorror moviegreat horrorfull horror

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.