terror

Pluralterrors

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Intense dread, fright, or fear.

   Pure terror swept through the crowd as the bridge began to sway.

   He lay awake in terror, certain that someone was moving around downstairs.

   Similarfear, fright, dread

   Note

   Fear you can feel in the body, and the word's history says so: through Old French terreur and Latin terror, from terrēre "to frighten", it reaches back to an Indo-European root meaning "to shake" or "to tremble". Its signature verb is strike, as in to strike terror into someone. It also takes a plural for separate fits of fear, as when William Godwin in 1794 writes of "the terrors with which I was seized".

2. 2
   nouncountable

   Something or someone that causes intense fear.

   For ten years the pirate was the terror of the coastal towns.

   Drought remains a constant terror for farmers across the region.

   Similarscourge, menace, nightmare, bane, threat

   Note

   Unlike the feeling itself, these can be lined up and counted: Richard Brinsley Sheridan in 1788 speaks of an "array of terrours", keeping the spelling of late Middle English terrour. It also fits the frame a terror of a…, as in "a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester" in Joseph C. Lincoln's Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913). There it works as an intensifier: a terror of a storm is simply a very bad one.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The quality of causing dread; terribleness, especially as an element of narrative fiction.

   Shirley Jackson achieves terror through suggestion rather than explicit gore.

   Much of the film's terror comes from its long, empty hallway shots.

   Similarhorror, dread, menace

   Note

   Here the dread sits in the work, not in the person feeling it: a story, scene or film has terror the way a storm has force. It stays uncountable. You speak of a novel's terror, while a novel's terrors would mean the things that frighten inside it. Writers and critics talk about building, sustaining or achieving it.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The use of violence and intimidation for political ends; terrorism.

   The bombing was the deadliest act of terror in the nation's history.

   Intelligence agencies share data to disrupt terror financing networks.

   Similarterrorism

   Note

   Mostly found in front of another noun: a terror attack, terror financing, the War on Terror. In that slot it is a compact stand-in for terrorism. Context keeps it apart from the feeling of dread: a terror attack is an act of terrorism, not an attack of fear.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   An episode of intense fear arising abruptly from deep sleep, typically in children; a night terror.

   The pediatrician explained that a terror strikes during deep sleep and, unlike a nightmare, leaves no memory behind.

   His terrors faded once his bedtime routine became more consistent.

   Note

   A clinician's shorthand for night terror, also called sleep terror or pavor nocturnus. It is classed as a parasomnia, a partial arousal out of slow-wave, non-REM sleep. The sleeper screams, shows strong autonomic arousal and cannot be reached. Because the episode rises from non-dreaming sleep, the person remembers nothing of it afterward.

6. 6
   adjectiveslangPhilippines

   Of a teacher: extremely strict and notorious for failing most of the class.

   Students trade warnings online about which professors are terror before enrollment opens.

   She survived a terror teacher in high school, so college exams don't scare her.

   Similarstrict, tough, harsh

   Oppositelenient, easy

   Note

   Philippine student slang, and a rare case of the noun turned adjective: a terror math teacher, or a professor who is simply terror. Because it is an adjective here, it compares (more terror, most terror) and takes no article after be. Keep it to informal talk among speakers who know it, since outside that setting it may not be understood.

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