From late Middle English terrour, from Old French terreur, from Latin terror, from terrēre, from itc-ola tr̥reō, from itc-pro *trozeō, from Proto-Indo-European *tre-, *tres- ("to tremble").

• (America) IPA: /ˈtɛɹ.ɚ/
  • (some accents) IPA: /tɛɚ/
• (RP) IPA: /ˈtɛɹ.ə/

terror

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

   Synonyms: Thesaurus:fear

   • 1794, William Godwin, Things as they are; or, The adventures of Caleb:

     The terrors with which I was seized […] were extreme.

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC ↗:

     "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."

2. (uncountable) The action or quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially such qualities in narrative fiction.
   • 1921, Edith Birkhead, The tale of terror: a study of the Gothic romance:
3. (countable) Something or someone that causes such fear.
   • 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     The terrors of the storm

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC ↗:

     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.

4. (uncountable) Terrorism.

   a terror attack

   the War on Terror

5. (pathology, countable) A night terror.
6. (Philippines, slang) A strict teacher that fails most of the students.

• in terrorem
• terrible
• terrific

• terrify
• terrorism
• terrorist

• French: terreur, effroi
• German: Schrecken, Grauen, schreckliche Furcht
• Portuguese: terror
• Russian: у́жас
• Spanish: terror

• French: terreur
• German: Terror
• Portuguese: terror
• Russian: у́жас
• Spanish: terror

• French: terrorisme
• Russian: тера́кт

Proper noun form of terror. Translation of French Terreur, as coined by the Thermidorian Reaction

1. (politics, history, usually with the) The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
2. (politics, history, usually with the) Any specific one of several historical reigns of terror.