Word.ws English Dictionary

horrid

Syllables: hor·rid/ˈhɒ.ɹɪd//ˈhɔ.ɹɪd/

horrid adjective: bristling, rough, rugged.

Adjective

horrid (comparative horrider or more horrid, superlative horridest or most horrid)

  1. (archaic) Bristling, rough, rugged.
    • His haughtie Helmet, horrid all with gold, // Both glorious brightnesse and great terror bredd.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 31
    • Yea there, where very Desolation dwells, / By grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid shades, / She may pass on with unblench'd majesty, / Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.1634 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey...
  2. Causing horror or dread.
    • Not in the legions / Of horrid hell, can come a devil more damned / In evils, to top Macbeth.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood, / that we the horrider may seem to those / Which chance to find us;1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  3. Offensive, disagreeable, abominable, execrable.
    • horrid weather
    • The other girls in class are always horrid to Jane.

Adverb

horrid (not comparable)

  1. Terribly; horridly; to an extreme extent.
    • “Beg y’ pardon, sir,” said a voice at the tent door; “but Dormer’s ’orrid bad, sir, an’ they’ve taken him orf, sir.”1889, Rudyard Kipling, “Only A Subaltern”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 149

horrid meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

horrid in Tamil

அச்சந்தரு, அருவருப்பான

horrid in Urdu

بھیانک, ڈراؤنا, درشت, کڑا, کھردرا, مہیب

horrid in Bengali

ভয়াবহ, কদর্য, ঘৃণ্য

horrid in Malayalam

horrible, terrible, dreadful
ഘോര, ഘോരം, ദാരുണമായ, ഭയാനകമായ, ഞെട്ടിപ്പിക്കുന്ന, ഭീകരം
horrible, nasty, disagreeable
ഭയങ്കര, ഭയകര, അരോചകമായ, വൃത്തികെട്ട, വെറുപ്പുളവാക്കുന്ന, കുരൂപമായ
More languagesFewer languages
horrid in Persian
وحشتناک, بد bad

Examples of horrid in a sentence

  • Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn, / Few paths of human feet, or tracks of beasts, were worn.1697, Virgil, “The Ninth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis....
  • I myself will be / The priest, and boldly do those horrid rites / You shake to think on.c. 1622, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The Sea-Voyage. A Comedy.”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […]...
  • What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale, / And of the horrid foulness that he wrought,1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Vivien”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 132:
  • My Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the constable by the heels to answer it next Sessions: which is a horrid shame.1668 November 1 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “October 23rd, 1668”, in Henry B[enjamin]...

All 22 example sentences with horrid

Synonyms of horrid

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of horrid

Forms of horrid

comparativehorrider
comparativemore horrid
superlativehorridest
superlativemost horrid

Origin of horrid

Borrowed from Latin horridus (“rough, bristly, savage, shaggy, rude”), from horrere (“to bristle”). See horrent, horror, ordure.

Words formed from horrid

Words that rhyme with horrid

Questions about horrid

What does horrid mean?
Horrid means bristling, rough, rugged.
What is horrid in Tamil?
Horrid in Tamil is அச்சந்தரு, அருவருப்பான. See Horrid meaning in Tamil.
How do you use horrid in a sentence?
Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn, / Few paths of human feet, or tracks of beasts, were worn.
What part of speech is horrid?
Horrid can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce horrid?
Horrid is pronounced /ˈhɒ.ɹɪd/ (UK).

Words near horrid in the dictionary

  1. horribler
  2. horribles
  3. horriblest
  4. horribley
  5. horribly
  6. horrid
  7. horrider
  8. horridest
  9. horridity
  10. horridly
  11. horridness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: horrid (page history and authors); horrid (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); horrid (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Horrid (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); horrid (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-horrid.wav, en-us-horrid.ogg.

Cite this entry: “horrid.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/horrid. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.