horror

Forms

horror m (plural horrores)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin horror (“a bristling; shuddering; dread”), a noun of horreō (“to bristle, shudder”).^[2][3][4][1] Old Spanish also had a popular form with another suffix, Old Spanish horrura, used by Berceo, which later came to mean “dirt, filth, dross”.^[2][1]

The same Latin word is Portuguese horror, Catalan horror, French horreur and Italian orrore.^[5][6] The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Italic *horzēō and Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰers- (“to bristle”).^[1][7] De Vaan reconstructs a stative verb meaning “to be stiff, surprised”, and its closest cognates are in Sanskrit, where they mean “to be delighted, excited”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest records are in the Aragonese translations of Juan Fernández de Heredia, between 1376 and 1396, spelt orror: in his Orosius, men drank from skulls sin ningunt orror nin asco “without any horror or disgust”.^[8] Corominas dates the word from 1574, in Morales.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

From the Golden Age on the word is frequent, and has lately tended to become popular.^[2] Covarrubias (1611) explains it as fear or fright with trembling, quoting Virgil, and the Diccionario de Autoridades calls it a purely Latin word for consternation and fear caused by something frightful.^[9][10] The Academy's 1884 edition defines it as a movement of the soul caused by something terrible, usually with shuddering.^[11]

Besides the feeling, the word now names a deep aversion and, mostly in the plural, an atrocity; in colloquial speech the plural means “a great deal”, also as an adverb.^[4] The same use of a great quantity is found in popular Portuguese um ror de “a lot of”.^[12][5] It is also the name of a genre of fiction and film.^[13]

Timeline

• 1376–1396 – first records, spelt orror, in Juan Fernández de Heredia.^[8]
• 1574 – Corominas's first record, in Morales.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as fear with trembling.^[9]
• 1702 – first record of the derivative horroroso.^[3]
• 1703 – the first record from the Americas, in Guatemala.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades calls it a purely Latin word.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology, from Latin horror.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. horror, terror: an intense feeling caused by something terrible.^[4][1]
2. A deep aversion to someone or something: Le tiene horror a los aviones.^[4][13]
3. (mostly in the plural) An atrocity, a monstrous thing.^[4]
4. (colloquial, in the plural, also as an adverb) A great deal: Aquel verano llovió horrores.^[4]
5. (film and literature) The horror genre.^[13]

Word family

• horroroso

Related words

• horrible
• horrendo
• hórrido
• horripilar
• aborrecer
• Latin horror

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 399
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. horror
4. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. horror
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4190
6. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 4, 815
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. horreō
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. horror
9. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 996
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 180
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 577
12. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. horror
13. ^ a b c Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
14. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. horror