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
Example
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”).