horrible

Pluralhorribles

1. 1
   adjective

   Extremely bad; very poor in quality or deeply unpleasant.

   The traffic this morning was absolutely horrible and made everyone late.

   Critics agreed the sequel was a horrible disappointment after the original.

   Similarterrible, awful, dreadful, appalling, atrocious

   Oppositewonderful, excellent, great, lovely

   Note

   This is horrible as everyday disapproval rather than dread. When Roger Ebert called Transformers "a horrible movie" in 2010, nobody was meant to tremble, as the Latin root behind the shuddering sense would suggest. The word compares in two ways: horribler and horriblest exist beside more horrible and most horrible.

2. 2
   adjective

   Causing horror; deeply shocking or frightening.

   Survivors described the horrible conditions inside the collapsed building.

   The film's most horrible scene drove several viewers out of the theater.

   Similarhorrific, horrifying, dreadful, terrible, frightful

   Note

   Here the word keeps its Latin force: horribilis is built on horrere, "to tremble," and what is horrible makes you shudder. Strangers faint at the Laughing Man's horrible face in Salinger, and Thurber's mother lives in "horrible suspicion" of electricity dripping through the house. When a sentence needs real dread rather than mere disapproval, this is the sense at work; the milder everyday use is the "very bad" meaning.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A terrifying thing, especially a feared bad consequence claimed to be the likely result of some action.

   Critics conjured one horrible after another to scare voters away from the proposal.

   The memo paraded a long list of horribles that supposedly awaited the company.

   Similarhorror, nightmare

   Note

   An adjective put to work as a countable noun, and most at home in argument. Opponents of a measure conjure up "possible horribles," in the phrase of a 1982 United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on the Genocide Convention, and John Dean on CNN in 2000 offered "one horrible after the next." It usually travels in the plural, and it is not new: Melville uses it in Moby-Dick (1851).

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A participant in a parade of horribles, dressed in a comic or grotesque costume.

   A grinning horrible in a papier-mâché mask waved at the crowd lining the street.

   Hundreds of horribles in outlandish getups filled the holiday parade.

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