horrifying
Britishadjective
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causing feelings of horror in; awful; terrifying;
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dismaying or greatly shocking; dreadful
Other Word Forms
Explanation
Horrifying things are scary and disturbing. A car crash, a violent scene in a movie, and an exposé on what's really in your fast food hamburger can all be described as horrifying. Something that scares you to death, like the sound of footsteps upstairs in your dark, empty house or the sight of a bear on the hiking trail, is horrifying. Equally horrifying are things that sicken you, like photographs from a battlefield or the description of a painful dental procedure. Horrifying things inspire horror, originally a Latin word meaning both "dread" and "religious awe," from horrere, "to bristle with fear."
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.
Safety data from 1920 shows that car-related death rates were a horrifying 20 times as high as today, when calculated on a per-mile-driven basis.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 2, 2026
Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey said the incident was "horrifying" and called on the government to "confront antisemitism wherever it appears"
From BBC • Apr. 29, 2026
We have far more intimate, horrifying knowledge about the fundamental evil of power and fame, but little we can do to fight it.
From Salon • Apr. 25, 2026
The film finally transitions from the emotional tête-à-tête to the genre piece that was promised, as Sam and Mary discover they’ve seen the same ghost: a horrifying red spectral vision.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 17, 2026
And because what we are doing is so horrifying, we tend not to think of it much.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Definitions 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.
