horrible

First attested in Middle English^[1] (alternately as horrible and orrible)^[2] in 1303^[3]: from Old French^[1][2] horrible, orrible, orible,^[3] from Latin horribilis,^[1][2][3] from horr(ēre) (“tremble”) + -ibilis (“-ible”).^[2]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈhɒɹɪbəl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈhɔɹɪbəl/, /ˈhɒɹɪbəl/, [-bəɫ]

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• (New York City, Philadelphia, Ireland) IPA^(key): /ˈhɑɹɪbəl/

horrible (plural horribles)

1. A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     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!

   • 1982, United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The Genocide Convention: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate:

     A lot of the possible horribles conjured up by the people objecting to this convention ignore the plain language of this treaty.

   • 1991, Alastair Scott, Tracks Across Alaska: A Dog Sled Journey:

     The pot had previously simmered skate wings, cods' heads, whales, pigs' hearts and a long litany of other horribles.

   • 2000 January 21, John Dean, CNN interview‎^[1]:

     I'm trying to convince him that the criminal behavior that's going on at the White House has to end. And I give him one horrible after the next. I just keep raising them. He sort of swats them away.

   • 2001, Neil K. Komesar, Law's Limits: The Rule of Law and the Supply and Demand of Rights:

     Many scholars have demonstrated these horribles and contemplated significant limitations on class actions.

2. A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles.

horrible (comparative horribler or more horrible, superlative horriblest or most horrible)

1. Causing horror; terrible; shocking.
   • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1949, J. D. Salinger, The Laughing Man:

     Strangers fainted dead away at the sight of the Laughing Man's horrible face. Acquaintances shunned him.

     The New Yorker, March 19

   • 1953, Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451:

     Some of us have had plastic surgery on our faces and fingerprints. Right now we have a horrible job; we're waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end.

   • 1933, James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times:

     Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

2. Tremendously bad.
   • 2010, Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010, page 599:

     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.

• See Thesaurus:frightening
• See Thesaurus:bad

• horrific
• horrify
• horror
• horrendous

Borrowed from Latin horribilis.

horrible (epicene, plural horribles)

1. horrible

• horror

Borrowed from Latin horribilis.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic) [uˈrib.blə]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [oˈri.ble]

horrible m or f (masculine and feminine plural horribles)

1. horrible

• horriblement

• horror

Inherited from Old French horrible, orrible, orible, borrowed from Latin horribilis.

• ^{(mute h)} IPA^(key): /ɔ.ʁibl/

• Audio:

  (file)

horrible (plural horribles)

1. horrible (causing horror)

• horriblement

• horreur

• “horrible”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• horríbel

Learned borrowing from Latin horribilis.

• IPA^(key): /oˈriβlɪ/

horrible m or f (plural horribles)

1. horrible

• horriblemente

• horror

Borrowed from Old French horrible, orrible, orible, from Latin horribilis.

horrible

1. horrible

• English: horrible

Borrowed from Latin horribilis.

• IPA^(key): /oˈrible/ [oˈri.β̞le]
• Rhymes: -ible
• Syllabification: ho‧rri‧ble

horrible m or f (masculine and feminine plural horribles)

1. horrible

   Synonym: desapacible

• “horrible”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2023 November 28