Adjective: horrible
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | horribler |
| Superlative | horriblest |
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more horrible |
| Superlative | most horrible |
Sample Sentences
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Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off. [1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:]
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Strangers fainted dead away at the sight of the Laughing Man's horrible face. Acquaintances shunned him. [1949, J. D. Salinger, The Laughing Man:]
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Some of us have had plastic surgery on our faces and fingerprints. Right now we have a horrible job; we're waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. [1953, Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451:]
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Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house. [1933, James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times:]
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Having now absorbed all or parts of 750 responses to my complaints about Transformers, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most of those writing agree with me that it is a horrible movie. [2010, Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010, page 599:]
Adjectives inflected like horrible
serene,
severe,
secure,
sedate,
wheelie,
simple,
complete,
fulsome,
sprightlie,
discrete,
plosive,
bizarre,
brusque,
brittle,
wholesome,
sincere,
shystie,
loveable,
prophane,
terrible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
First attested in Middle English (alternately as horrible and orrible) in 1303: from Old French horrible, orrible, orible, from Latin horribilis, from horr(ēre) (“tremble”) + -ibilis (“-ible”). See: Latin Adjectives '
horribilis'.