Also 4–6 -oure, 6–9 -our. [ME. terrour, a. F. terreur (14th c.):—L. terrōr-em, nom. terror, f. terrēre to frighten: see -OR 1.]
1. The state of being terrified or greatly frightened; intense fear, fright, or dread. Also, with a and pl., an instance of this.
c. 1375. Sc. Leg. Saints, xxxiii. (George), 701. He … but rednes ore terroure Of goddis son wes confessoure.
1500–20. Dunbar, Ballat of Passion, 137. For grit terrour of Chrystis deid, The erde did trymmil quhar I lay.
1560. Bible (Genev.), Ps. lv. 4. The terrors [Coverd. fear] of death are fallen vpon me.
1605. Shaks., Lear, IV. ii. 12. It is the Cowish terror of his spirit That dares not vndertake.
1615. G. Sandys, Trav., 20. By little and little [they] descended as their terrors forsooke them.
1657. Thornley, trans. Longus’ Daphnis & Chloe, 46. Pan sends a Terrour upon the Methymnæans.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 7, ¶ 3. This Remark struck a pannick Terror into several who were present.
a. 1763. Shenstone, Ess., xiii. Wks. 1765, II. 51. The gloom of night … was productive of terrour.
1794. Godwin, Cal. Williams, 236. The terrors with which I was seized … were extreme.
1837. Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sc. (1857), I. 227. Showed hesitation, alarm, increasing terrour.
1871. R. Ellis, Catullus, lxiv. 338. You shall a son see born that knows not terror, Achilles.
2. transf. The action or quality of causing dread; terrific quality, terribleness; also concr. a thing or person that excites terror; something terrifying.
1528. Roy Rede me (Arb.), 41. Threatnynge with fearfull terroure.
1560. Daus, trans. Sleidane’s Comm., 209. He vseth hys name sometime, only for a clooke and a terrour.
1667. Milton, P. L., II. 704. So spake the grieslie terrour.
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 333, ¶ 22. The Messiah appears cloathed with so much Terrour and Majesty.
1788. Gibbon, Decl. & F., l. (1846), V. 16. The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert.
1814. Scott, Ld. of Isles, VI. xvi. Clearing war’s terrors from his eye.
1841. Emerson, Ess., Prudence, Wks. (Bohn), I. 100. The terrors of the storm.
1864. Burton, Scot Abr., I. ii. 61. He became … the terror of all the well-disposed within the district.
1900. G. Swift, Somerley, 14. There we kept up the reputation of ‘little terrors’ that we had earned with Miss Graten.
3. King of terrors, Death personified.
1611. Bible, Job xviii. 14. His confidence … shall bring him to the king of terrours [1560 King of feare; Coverd. very fearfulnesse shall brynge him to the kynge].
1682. Flavell, Fear, 9. Job calls it the king of terrors … or the most terrible of terribles.
1794. Godwin, Cal. Williams, xxiv. It surely is not worse to encounter the king of terrors in health,… than to encounter him already half subdued by sickness and suffering.
1827–47. Hare, Guesses (1874), 88. It is the only voice which can triumph over Death, and turn the King of terrours into an angel of light.
1837. Hawthorne, Twice-told T. (1851), I. 234. Was the King of Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so.
4. Reign of terror, a state of things in which the general community live in dread of death or outrage; esp. in French Hist. the period of the First Revolution from about March 1793 to July 1794, called also the Terror, the Red Terror, when the ruling faction remorselessly shed the blood of persons of both sexes and of all ages and conditions whom they regarded as obnoxious.
Hence also White Terror, applied to the counter-revolution that followed the Red Terror, and to other periods of remorseless repression in various countries.
1801. Hel. M. Williams, Sk. Fr. Rep., I. xviii. 231. This superb monument had suffered most from the reign of terror.
c. 1870. Miniature, xi., in The Sibyl, 1 April (1893). When the Terror, with hungry throat Ravished the homes of the wide Touraine.
1877. Morley, Crit. Misc., Ser. II. 132. A White Terror succeeded the Red Terror.
1883. Fortn. Rev., 1 Nov., 701. The red terror of the French Jacobins is insignificant by the side of the white terror of Ferdinand VII.
1891. Ld. Rosebery, Pitt, xi. 186. On the one side there were murders, roastings, plunder of arms, and a reign of terror [in Ireland in 1797].
1893. Tablet, 9 Dec., 934. A little Terror reigned over the provincial commune.
5. Comb. a. attributive, as terror-drop, -fit, gleam; b. objective (with pr. pples.), as terror-breathing, -giving, -inspiring, -preaching, -stirring, -striking, etc., adjs.; c. instrumental (with pa. pples.), as terror-crazed, -fraught, -haunted, -mingled, -ridden, -riven, -shaken, -smitten, -stricken, -struck, etc., adjs.; so terror-strike vb.
1598. Drayton, Heroic Ep., Mortimer to Q. Isabel, 114. Curses … Through the sterne throte of *terror-breathing warre.
1873. W. Carleton, Burning of Chicago, viii. The panic-struck, *terror-crazed city.
1897. P. Warung, Tales Old Regime, 184. [Convicts] who sweated *terror-drops beneath their stamped blankets.
1868. Ld. Houghton, Select. fr. Wks., 199. At doubt and *terror-fit he only laughed.
1868. Farrar, Seekers, I. vii. (1875), 98. All this *terror-fraught interspace between heaven and earth.
a. 1743. Savage, Public Spirit, 127. Instant we catch her *terror-giving cares.
1844. Longfellow, Norman Baron, vii. The lays they chanted Reached the chamber *terror-haunted.
1854. Grace Greenwood, Haps & Mishaps, 91. Enrolment in this honourable *terror-inspiring, omnipresent corps.
1799. Campbell, Pleas. Hope, II. 255. Nature hears, with *terror-mingled trust, The shock that hurls her fabric in the dust.
1630. Drayton, Noah, 225. This good man, this *terror-preaching Noy.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, XXII. 320. Then all the Greekes … admir’d his *terror-stirring lim.
1845. Hirst, Com. Mammoth, 16. Our *terror-stricken warriors quailed.
1871. Macduff, Mem. Patmos, iii. 35. He cowers like a terror-stricken child.
1611. Barksted, Hiren (1876), 74. So her beames did *terror-strike his sight.
1598. Drayton, Heroic Ep., Owen Tudor to Q. Kath., 23. His dreadfull *terror-striking name.
1799. Ht. Lee, Canterb. T., Frenchm. T. (ed. 2), I. 270. She found herself alone,… *terror-struck, bewildered.
1824. Lamb, Elia, Ser. II. Blakesmoor in H—shire. A sneaking curiosity, *terror-tainted.
Hence Terrorful, Terrorsome adjs., full of or fraught with terror, terrifying.
1870. Contemp. Rev., XIV. 491. The points … show themselves … with that dark jaggedness and terrorful meaning which [etc.].
1890. Leeds Merc., 3 Feb., 5/1. A writer … makes it terrorsome by the following anecdote.
