terror

Terror is intense fear—the kind that can make someone tremble. English took the word through late Middle English terrour from Old French terreur, a learned borrowing from Latin terror, meaning “fright, fear, terror.” Latin terror is connected with terrēre, “to frighten,” and the ancestry shown for the word reaches Proto-Italic trozeō and Proto-Indo-European tre-, “to shake.” The old tremble-image remains vivid in the word’s sense of overwhelming dread.

Recorded uses show the word’s range expanding beyond a feeling. Richard Brinsley Sheridan used terrors for things that inspire fear in 1788; William Godwin wrote of being seized by “terrors” in 1794. By 1887, H. Rider Haggard’s She could describe rule “by terror,” and later English also uses terror for terrorism and for a night terror. The word can describe dread itself, what causes it, or its deliberate use to frighten.