- present participle of terrify.
terrifying
Britishadjective
Other Word Forms
Explanation
If something is terrifying, it makes you feel extremely afraid. Even if your little sister loves the scary roller coaster at the amusement park, you might still find it terrifying. Some people feel mildly alarmed when they see a small spider — if you have a phobia about spiders, discovering one in your bathtub is truly terrifying. This alarming adjective comes from the Latin root terrificus ("causing terror"), which it shares with terrific, a word whose meaning was originally just as scary.
Vocabulary lists containing terrifying
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.
But this year's El Nino layers "a terrifying level of additional risk", said Obura, a Kenyan reef expert and chair of IPBES, the UN's expert scientific panel on biodiversity.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
Gretchen Palek, head of alternative at Blumhouse Television, attributes the show’s success to the careful and sensitive approach to telling these terrifying experiences while highlighting real-life universal anxieties.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2026
Joshua Robinson caught up with Norway’s 6-foot-5 striker on terrifying his opponents—and the surreal World Cup summer that turned him into much more than a soccer star.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
"You can post something, or someone will take a video of something, and the fact that it can be permanently online is actually quite terrifying," she says.
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
But he’d heard terrifying stories about bears that crawled out of their dens way too early, desperately hungry.
From "I Survived the Great Alaska Earthquake, 1964" by Lauren Tarshis
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
