thriller
Americannoun
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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.”
Etymology
Origin of thriller
1885–90; 1920–25 thriller for def. 2; thrill + -er 1
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.
As with Clooney, “The Constant Gardener’s” Rachel Weisz won her Academy Award for appearing in a spy thriller, with both stories based on real events.
From Los Angeles Times
In a widely anticipated outcome that felt like a long-overdue coronation, Paul Thomas Anderson won the top honor at Saturday’s Directors Guild of America Awards for his Thomas Pynchon-inspired political thriller “One Battle After Another.”
From Los Angeles Times
The director, best known for his muscular action thrillers “La Femme Nikita” and “Léon: The Professional,” is often given to extravagantly silly filmmaking: “The Fifth Element,” “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.”
Some refer to her as the “Manchurian candidate,” said John Hart, a communication professor at Hawaii Pacific University, referring to the malleable cipher in the famous political thriller.
From Los Angeles Times
The second series of the BBC thriller reached its dramatic finale on 1 February, with Cornwell revealing a third series is already in the works.
From BBC
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.
