horror
n. C / Un. a very strong feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. You feel this when you see or hear about something truly terrible.
n. an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust caused by something extremely unpleasant or terrifying. Often used to describe a genre of fiction intended to frighten its audience.
She watched the news in horror as the storm hit.
The witnesses described the scene with a sense of horror that stayed with them for years.
The director mastered the art of psychological horror, relying on subtle shadows and unsettling sounds rather than graphic violence to terrify the viewers.
From Middle English horer, horrour, from Old French horror, from Latin horror (“a bristling, a shaking, trembling as with cold or fear, terror”), from horrere (“to bristle, shake, be terrified”). Displaced native Old English ōga.
Uncountable when referring to the emotion; countable when referring to a specific terrible event or a work of fiction.