furor
AmericanOther Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of furor
First recorded in 1425–75; from Latin: “a raging”; replacing late Middle English fureor, from Middle French
Explanation
A furor is a strong and sudden reaction, often negative and shared by many people, such as the furor that erupted when Coca-Cola replaced its beloved soft drink with "New Coke" in the 1980s. Like the Latin word furia, which means "passion," a furor involves strong emotion. Not all furors are negative — sometimes a furor is just a fad or a craze that seems to come out of nowhere, like the rubber bracelets every kid in school seemed to start wearing at the exact same second. That bracelet furor? It all started with kids getting excited and saying they just had to have them.
Vocabulary lists containing furor
Hatchet
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Warriors Don't Cry (Abridged)
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Purple Hibiscus
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But the furor mounting throughout 2020 and 2021 was too loud to ignore.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2026
McCarthy rode the furor created by his speech to the heights of political celebrity, and ultimately to his own downfall.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
Winters tried to douse the furor with an initial post on Friday that said Standard Chartered “will continue to speak honestly about the impact of technological change.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
The same anger over lost oil wealth and a monarch in the pocket of foreign interests boiled over again in the 1970s, this time driven by religious furor from the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
From Barron's ● Mar. 5, 2026
Late in the night, the furor finally began to relent, replaced by more unnerving sounds.
From "Fablehaven" by Brandon Mull
Nine of the 12 furors further found that both companies had acted with malice, oppression or fraud, a finding that set the stage for the separate punitive damages.
From Barron's ● Mar. 25, 2026
Unlike memorable judging furors from the 1990s and 2000s, this time there was social media for angry fans to dissect videos and zoom in on every potential misstep.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 12, 2026
The point here, it ought to be said, is less to engage in moral whataboutism than to observe that public furors are frequently neither consistent nor coincidental.
From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2022
Even comics without star power who have set off furors, like Sam Morril and Kurt Metzger, are doing fine.
From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2015
Their chosen speakers lashed them into fresh furors of patriotism while they waited.
From Mlle. Fouchette A Novel of French Life by Charles Theodore Murray
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
