Horrible
adj, noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.
"Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles!"
- 2 A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles.
- 1 Causing horror; terrible; shocking.
"Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off."
- 2 Tremendously bad.
"Having now absorbed all or parts of 750 responses to my complaints about Transformers, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most of those writing agree with me that it is a horrible movie."
- 1 provoking horror wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"I gasped with surprise at the horrible picture of the starving people."
Etymology
First attested in Middle English (alternately as horrible and orrible) in 1303: from Old French horrible, orrible, orible, from Latin horribilis, from horr(ēre) (“tremble”) + -ibilis (“-ible”).
Related phrases
More for "horrible"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.