thriller
Americannoun
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thrillers
plural
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a person or thing that thrills.
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an exciting, suspenseful play or story, especially a mystery story.
noun
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a book, film, play, etc, depicting crime, mystery, or espionage in an atmosphere of excitement and suspense
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a person or thing that thrills
Discover More
In Great Britain, the word thriller is sometimes used for all mystery novels: “Martha Grimes, an American, writes British-style thrillers.”
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of thriller
1885–90; 1920–25 thriller for def. 2; thrill + -er 1
Explanation
A thriller is a suspenseful movie, TV show, book, or play. If you love thrillers, you probably enjoy mysterious plots, suspicious characters, and being on the edge of your seat. Thrillers are known for being exciting and sometimes scary, evoking emotions like anticipation, fear, and suspense. They tend to use plot twists and cliffhangers to keep an audience or reader intrigued, and they often feature a villain. The literary label thriller first appeared in the late 1800s, from the verb thrill, "give a shivering, excited feeling."
Vocabulary lists containing thriller
Literary Genres - Introductory
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Literary Genres - Advanced
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Reading: Literature - Literary Genres - Middle School
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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:
Watch an unhinged new thriller: Verity, starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett, brings Colleen Hoover’s most bonkers book to the big screen.
From Slate ● Oct. 5, 2026
“It’s the prestige and the precision of the financial thriller part, but also the emotional volatility of young people pursuing power, identity and belonging.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
Australia hosted a divisional clash between the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams last month, while the Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys played out a thriller in Brazil last week.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
The bookish thriller "Verity" cleaned up in its North American box office debut this weekend while Tom Cruise flopped in "Digger" playing a rich old guy who thinks he can save the world.
From Barron's ● Oct. 4, 2026
They have a lot of my favorites in the thriller and young adult sections.
From "They Both Die at the End" by Adam Silvera
The film marks a departure for Gilroy, who cut his teeth writing action movies like the "Bourne" films and legal thrillers like "Michael Clayton."
From Barron's ● Oct. 4, 2026
It’s a style that has served him well in modern action thrillers like his installments of the “Bourne” franchise, and films depicting recent real-world events like “Captain Phillips” and “The Lost Bus.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
Reggie Bannister, the actor who devoted his decades-long career primarily to independent horror thrillers including all five films of the the cult “Phantasm” franchise, has died.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
This isn't just limited to old-fashioned detective novels or psychological thrillers, but can be anything from true crime and spy stories to supernatural horrors like the works of Stephen King's books.
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026
He’s been in thirty-eight dramas, twelve crime pictures and comedies, eleven thrillers, eight action films, seven Westerns, six war movies, four documentaries, three horror flicks, two sci-fi films, and a musical, among others.
From "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell
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.
