TERRIFY (terrified)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected form: terrified   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does terrify mean? 

• TERRIFY (verb)
  The verb TERRIFY has 1 sense:

1. fill with terror; frighten greatly

  Familiarity information: TERRIFY used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TERRIFY (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they terrify    ... he / she / it terrifies   
Past simple: terrified   
Past participle: terrified   
-ing form: terrifying   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Fill with terror; frighten greatly

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Synonyms:

terrify; terrorise; terrorize

Hypernyms (to "terrify" is one way to...):

affright; fright; frighten; scare (cause fear in)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "terrify"):

panic (cause sudden fear in or fill with sudden panic)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Sentence example:

The bad news will terrify him

Derivation:

terror (an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety)

 Context examples 

The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again, appeared to terrify him.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Slowly she advanced, her face pale and drawn with a frightful apprehension, her eyes fixed and staring, her terrified gaze riveted upon the dark figure on the floor.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She had caught herself wondering what marriage was like, and the becoming conscious of the waywardness and ardor of the thought had terrified her.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Terrified as I was, I could not help thinking to myself that this must have been how Mr. Arrow got the strong waters that destroyed him.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I was so terrified that I do not know what I did.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I now observed myself to be less terrified than I had been in the morning.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

So, is the X-ray glow that fills the sky a sign of peaceful "charge exchange" in the solar system or evidence of terrifying explosions in the distant past?

(Evidence for supernovas near Earth, NASA)

She was so terrified at this, that she ran crying and screaming to her mother.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Once more also we were able to communicate with Zambo, who had been terrified by the spectacle from afar of an avalanche of apes falling from the edge of the cliff.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Who or what speaks?" I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)