horrível

Forms

horrível m or f (plural horríveis, comparable, comparative mais horrível, superlative o mais horrível or horribilíssimo)^[1] Houaiss records horrible in 1570 and horribel in the 16th century;^[2][3] Cunha has horribel in the 17th.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin horribilis (“causing horror, dreadful”), a learned word.^[2][3][1] Nascentes calls it semi-learned.^[4] The first records spell the ending ⟨-ble⟩ and ⟨-bel⟩.^[2][3]

The same Latin word gave Spanish horrible, Galician horrible, Catalan horrible, French horrible and Italian orribile.^[5][1]

The Latin adjective is formed from horreō (“to bristle, shudder”) and the suffix -bilis.^[6][1] De Vaan traces the verb to *χors-ē- (“to be stiff”) and Proto-Indo-European *ǵhrs-eh1- (“to be stiff, surprised”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's first record is from a text of 1570, with the spelling horrible and the sense “dreadful, causing horror”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Morais (1813) defines the word as “causing horror; fearful, tremendous, dreadful”, as of a death or a storm.^[8] Figueiredo (1899) adds the weakened senses “very bad” and “very ugly”.^[9] In modern use the word mostly means “very bad or unpleasant”, and the DLP records it also as an intensifier, “going beyond what is normal”.^[2][10] The absolute superlative is horribilíssimo.^[11]

Timeline

• 1570 – horrible, the first record.^[2]
• 16th century – the spelling horribel.^[2]
• 1813 – Morais enters horrível.^[8]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records the senses “very bad” and “very ugly”.^[9]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Causing horror or fear; dreadful, horrendo.^[2][12][1]
2. Very bad or unpleasant; awful: que dia horrível.^[2][11]
3. Very ugly.^[10][9]
4. Extreme, going far beyond the normal.^[10]

Related words

• horror
• horroroso
• hórrido
• Latin horribilis
• Spanish horrible

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. horrível
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. horror
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. horrível
5. ^ 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. horrible
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. horribilis
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 120
9. ^ a b c Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 710
10. ^ a b c Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, revised online edition (2023–) of the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea (2001), https://dicionario.acad-ciencias.pt, p. s.v. horrível
11. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. horrível
12. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. horrível