terror
noun · adjective
Simple meaning
Someone who inspires fear or dread.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
tehrerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈtɛɹɚ
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.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A person who inspires fear or dread
“He was the terror of the neighborhood.”
countableuncountable
Intense dread, fright, or fear.
countable
Something or someone that causes such fear.
uncountable
The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
uncountable
Terrorism.
adjective
philippinesslang
A strict teacher who fails most of the students.
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: A person who inspires fear or dread
In this sense, terror is a very strong, expressive word and reaches for fear at its strongest, so mild worry is well below it.
“He was the terror of the neighborhood.”
- Emotional tone
- Strongly negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Very strong
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- Strongly negative / painful
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
Usage note
Terror is emotionally heavy: it suggests deep or lasting feeling, not a passing mood, so it can overstate a small reaction.
Natural pattern: terror of …
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use terror
- “He was the terror of the neighborhood.”noun
- “He used terror to make them confess.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Any of several usually small short-bodied breeds originally trained to hunt animals living underground.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A very troublesome child.
A very troublesome child.
An emotional episode (usually in young children) in which the person awakens in terror with feelings of anxiety and fear but is unable to remember any incident that might have provoked…
Any period of brutal suppression thought to resemble the Reign of Terror in France.
A disorder of sleep characterized by a dream of terrifying dimensions far worse than a typical nightmare.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A radical who employs terror as a political weapon.
A political movement that uses terror as a weapon to achieve its goals.
A political movement that uses terror as a weapon to achieve its goals.
A political movement that uses terror as a weapon to achieve its goals.
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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.