verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To cause to feel extreme apprehension or unease; to cause to experience horror.

   "The haunted house horrified me, as I passed from one room to the next feeling more and more like I wasn’t going to survive."

2. 2
   fill with apprehension or alarm; cause to be unpleasantly surprised wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

dismayfrightenterrifyaffrightalarmalarm

Example

More examples

"The announcement was intended to horrify the audience."

Etymology

From horror + -ify, or borrowed from Latin horrificare (cf. French horrifier). 1791, in form horrifying.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.