horror story
Americannoun
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a story, movie, etc., that entertains or fascinates by shocking or frightening, especially by an emphasis on bloodshed or supernatural forces.
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Informal. a distressing experience.
the horror stories of child abuse.
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.
Felicity, now mid-career, remembers one horror story from her first job as a teenager.
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
It quickly became a so-called "creepypasta" -- a short horror story reposted and modified around the web, to which other users added details such as monsters and undiscovered dimensions.
From Barron's ● May 28, 2026
For Mr. Studwell’s best horror story, he turns to Nigeria’s Ajaokuta steel plant, which cost billions of dollars but never got around to producing any steel.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 16, 2026
Six months and 16 Oscar nominations ago, Delroy Lindo hopped on a Zoom call with the awards consultants running the campaign for Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying American horror story, “Sinners.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026
“I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. I’ll become one more Grisha horror story for them to tell their children.”
From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo
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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.
