Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Horrific |
HorrificAdjective1. Grossly offensive to decency or morality; causing horror; "subjected to outrageous cruelty"; "a hideous pattern of injustice"; "horrific conditions in the mining industry". 2. Causing fear or dread or terror; "the awful war"; "an awful risk"; "dire news"; "a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked"; "the dread presence of the headmaster"; "polio is no longer the dreaded disease it once was"; "a dreadful storm"; "a fearful howling"; "horrendous explosions shook the city"; "a terrible curse". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "horrific" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1844. (references) |
Etymology: Horrific \Hor*rif"ic\, adjective. [Latin expression horrifieus; horrere to be horrible -ficare (in comp.) to make: compare to the French expression horrifique. See Horror, -fy.]. (references) |
Synonyms: HorrificSynonyms: awful (adj), dire (adj), direful (adj), dread(a) (adj), dreaded (adj), dreadful (adj), fearful (adj), fearsome (adj), frightening (adj), hideous (adj), horrendous (adj), horrid (adj), outrageous (adj), terrible (adj). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Fear | Inspiring fear; Verb: alarming; formidable, redoubtable; perilous; (danger); portentous; fearful; dread, dreadful; fell; dire, direful; shocking; terrible, terrific; tremendous; horrid, horrible, horrific; ghastly; awful, awe-inspiring; revolting; (painful); Gorgonian. |
Pain | Odious, hateful, execrable, repulsive, repellent, abhorrent; horrid, horrible, horrific, horrifying; offensive. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Children | India | Press reports described horrific conditions in many mental hospitals elsewhere in the country, including one where inmates were chained in a row on a stone floor in an ill-lit room during the daytime. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Horrific" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Horrific" is used about 453 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 100% | 453 | 12,868 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "horrific": horrific-comic, horrific-looking. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
horrific | 14 |
horrific picture | 11 |
horrific photo | 6 |
horrific image | 3 |
hugos horrific adventure | 3 |
accident horrific | 2 |
crime horrific | 2 |
horrific pic | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "horrific"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | tmerrues (appalling, awe inspiring, awesome, deterrent, dreadful, fearful, grisly, lurid, monstrous, terrifying), lemerisës, i llahtarshëm (dire, monstrous, terrifying, tremendous). (various references) | |
Arabic | مروع (alarmed, appalling, awful, dreadful, frightened, frightening, frightful, ghastly, grisly, gruesome, horrible, horrified, horrifying, macabre, panic stricken, scared, shocked, shocking, startled, startling, terrified, terrifying, terror stricken, terrorized), مرعب (alarming, appalling, awesome, dreadful, frightening, frightful, hair raising, horrible, horrifying, terrible, terrific, terrifying), رهيب (bloodcurdling, bloody, chilly, dire, dreadful, fearful, fierce, grisly, gruesome, hairy, holy, horrible, lurid, macabre, monstrous, morbid, nightmarish, redoubtable, smashing, super, terrible, wretched). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | ужасяващ (abhorrent), потресаващ (lurid, staggering, startling, terrible). (various references) | |
Chinese | 可怕 (Awful, Dire, Fearful, Fearsome, frightful, Grewsome, gruesome, horrendous, horrible, horrid, macaber, macabre, redoubtable, scary, terrible). (various references) | |
Czech | hrùzný (apocalyptic, awesome, creepy, ghastly, harrowing, horrid, horrifying, scary), strašný (awful, chronic, dire, distressing, dreadful, fearful, fearsome, formidable, frightful, ghastly, gruesome, hairy, hellish, hideous, hopeless, horrible, terrible, tremendous). (various references) | |
French | horrifique (horrifying), horrible (horrible), terrifiant, épouvantable (horrible, horrid). (various references) | |
German | entsetzlich (abysmal, abysmally, appalling, awful, bloodcurdling, dire, dreadful, excruciating, frightful, gruesome, harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrendously, horrible, horribly, horrid, horridly, horrifying, outrageous, racking, shocking, shockingly, sickening, terrible, unspeakable). (various references) | |
Greek | φρικιαστικόσ (grisly, hideous, horrendous). (various references) | |
Hebrew | מחרי" (appalling, dreadful, grim, grisly, horrible, macabre), זועתי (atrocious, frightful, grisly, horrible). (various references) | |
Hungarian | rettentõ (formidable, horrible), rettenetes (astounding, awful, dreadful, ghastly, hideous, horrible, monstrous, monstrously, overwhelming, scary, terrible, terrific), ijesztõ (appaling, appalling, creepy, forbidding, frightening, frightful, startling). (various references) | |
Italian | raccapricciante (bloodcurdling, horrifying), orribile (abhorrent, abominable, agonizing, alien, awful, beastly, dreadful, ghastly, grim, grisly, gruesome, hideous, horrible, macabre, revolting, shocking). (various references) | |
Manx | craaynagh (shivery, shocking, tremulous, vibratory). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | orrifichay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | horroroso (awful), horrvel (grisly, gruesome, hideous, horrible, horrid). (various references) | |
Romanian | oribil (abominable, detestable, gruesome, hideous, hideously, horrible, horribly, horrid, monstrous). (various references) | |
Russian | ужасающий (appalling, bloodcurdling, spine-chilling, terrific). (various references) | |
Scottish | oillteil (disgusting, dreadful). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | užasavajući (horrifying). (various references) | |
Spanish | horrendo (dire, fearful, frightful, harrowing, horrendous, horrid), horrífico. (various references) | |
Swedish | hemsk (abysmal, agonizing, alarmed, atrocious, awful, bloodcurdling, creepy, dire, dismal, dismayed, dreadful, dreary, dumbfounded, eerie, eery, fell, frantic, frightful, ghastly, ghoulish, grisly, gruesome, hair raising, harrowing, hideous, horrible, horrid, lurid, put out of countenance, terrible, terrific, uncanny, weird, wicked), ryslig (atrocious, dreadful, gruesome, horrible, plaguey, plaguy), fasaväckande (appalling, horrifying). (various references) | |
Thai | น่ากลัว (awful, eerie, fearsome, gruesome, hideous, horrendous, horrid). (various references) | |
Turkish | korkunç (appalling, awesome, awful, cruel, desperate, dire, direful, disastrous, disgusting, dreadfull, eldritch, fearful, fearsome, formidable, frightening, frightful, ghastly, ghoulish, gory, grim, grisly, gruesome, haircurling, hair-raiser, hellish, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrid, lurid, monstrous, redoubtable, scary, shocking, sickening, terrible, terrific, terrifying), dehşete düşüren, aşırı (acute, beastly, beyond, breakneck, camp, confoundedly, cruelly, crusted, damned, dead, deep, desperate, desperately, devilish, disproportionate, every other day, exaggerated, exceeding, excessive, excessively, exorbitant, exquisite, extortionate, extravagant, extreme, extremely, fancy, ferocious, filthy, fond, fulsome, hard, heavy, hell, hell of, high, horrendous, hyper-, immoderate, inordinate, intense, intensive, like hell, like sin, outrageous, over, overweening, precious, shocking, splitting, steep, super, terribly, thick, ultra, unbounded, unco, unconscionable, undue, unmeasured, unreasonable, violent). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | страхітливий (appalling, frightful, horrendous, prodigious, unnatural, whopping), жахливий (abominable, abysmal, almighty, appalling, atrocious, awesome, awful, blinking, blood-curdling, blue, chronic, damnable, damned, deadly, desperate, deuced, devilish, dire, direful, dreadful, eerie, eery, eldritch, enormous, fearful, fearsome, ferocious, flagrant, frightening, frightful, grievous, gruesome, horrible, iniquitous, macabre, monstrous, plaguy, scarey, scary, towering, tragic, tremendous, ungodly, wretched). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | kinh khủng (desperate, direful, formidable, horrendous, horrible, horrid, tremendous), khủng khiếp (blood-curdling, frightful, horrendous, lurid, macabre, terrific, tremendous), ghê khiếp (fearful, frightfuly, ghastly). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "horrific": horrifically. (additional references) | |
| |
"Horrific" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Horabik, horific, Huraibi, morbific, Noribic. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "horrific" (pronounced hôri"fik) |
| 4 | -i" f i k | hieroglyphic, honorific, nonspecific, Pacific, prolific, pseudoscientific, scientific, specific, terrific, transpacific, unscientific. |
| 3 | -f i k | anthropomorphic, autotrophic, calligraphic, catastrophic, choreographic, delphic, demographic, dimorphic, epigraphic, ethnographic, geographic, geostrophic, graphic, heterotrophic, holographic, hydrographic, lithographic, logographic, metamorphic, micrographic, oceanographic, orographic, orphic, philosophic, photographic, polymorphic, pornographic, reprographic, stenographic, stereographic, stratigraphic, topographic, traffic. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-f-h-i-i-o-r-r" | |
-3 letters: chiro, chirr, choir, cirri, ichor. | |
-4 letters: coif, coir, corf, fico, foci, rich. | |
-5 letters: chi, cor, fir, foh, for, fro, hic, ich, orc, rho, rif, roc. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-f-h-i-i-o-r-r" | |
+4 letters: horrifically. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Quotations: Non-fiction | 5. Usage Frequency 6. Expressions 7. Expressions: Internet 8. Translations: Modern | 9. Derivations 10. Rhymes 11. Anagrams 12. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
