horrid

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Contents

[edit] English

[edit] Etymology

Latin horridus (“‘rough, bristly, savage, shaggy, rude’”); from horrere (“‘to bristle’”). See horrent, horror, ordure

[edit] Pronunciation

[edit] Adjective

horrid (comparative more horrid, superlative most horrid)

Positive
horrid

Comparative
more horrid

Superlative
most horrid
  1. (archaic) bristling, rough, rugged
    His haughtie Helmet. horrid all with gold,//Both glorious brightnesse and great terror bredd. - Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, I-vii-31
    Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn. - John Dryden
    Ye grots and caverns shagg's with horrid thorn! - Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, I-20
  2. causing horror or dread
    Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood,//that we the horrider may seem to those//Which chance to find us. - Shakespeare, Cymbeline, IV-ii
    I myself will be//The priest, and boldly do those horrid rites//You shake to think on. - John Fletcher, Sea Voyage, V-iv
    Not in the legions Of horrid hell. - Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV-iii
    What say you then to fair Sir Percivale,//And of the horrid foulness that he wrought? - Alfred Tennyson, Merlin and Vivien
  3. offensive, disagreeable, abominable, execrable
    1668 My Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the constable by the heels to answer it next Sessions: which is a horrid shame. - Samuel Pepys, Diary, October 23
    About the middle of November we began to work on our Ship's bottom, which we found very much eaten with the Worm: For this is a horrid place for Worms. - William Dampier, Voyages, I-362
    Already I your tears survey,//Already hear the horrid things they say. - Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, IV-108

[edit] Translations

bristling, rough, rugged
causing horror or dread
offensive, disagreeable, abominable, execrable

[edit] Usage notes

  • "Horrid" and "horrible" originally had different meanings, but have become almost synonymous over the years.

[edit] Synonyms

[edit] References

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