Abhorrent vs Horrible - What's the difference?
abhorrent | horrible |
(archaic) Inconsistent with; far removed from; strongly opposed to, as, abhorrent thoughts.
*
Contrary to; discordant.
* {{quote-book, year=1827, author=, title=The History of the Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire
, passage=This legal, and, as it should seem, injudicious profanation, so abhorrent to out stricter principles, was received with a very faint murmur, ... , url=http://books.google.com/books?id=rwoMAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22Injudicious%20profanation%2C%20so%20abhorrent%20to%20our%20stricter%20principles.%22&pg=PA82v=onepage&f=false}}
*
Abhorring; detesting; having or showing abhorrence; loathing.
Detestable or repugnant.
*
*
*
----
A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.
* 1851 , Herman Melville, Moby Dick
* 1982 , United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The Genocide Convention: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate
* 1991 , Alastair Scott, Tracks Across Alaska: A Dog Sled Journey
* 2000 , John Dean,
* 2001 , Neil K. Komesar, Law's Limits: The Rule of Law and the Supply and Demand of Rights
A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles.
Causing horror; terrible; shocking.
*
*: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.
*, comment=The New Yorker, March 19
, passage=Strangers fainted dead away at the sight of the Laughing Man's horrible face. Acquaintances shunned him.}}
*, author=(Ray Bradbury)
, passage=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.}}
Tremendously wrong or errant.
*{{quote-book, year=1933, title=(My Life and Hard Times), author=(James Thurber)
, passage=Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.}}
----
As adjectives the difference between abhorrent and horrible
is that abhorrent is inconsistent with; far removed from; strongly opposed to, as, abhorrent thoughts while horrible is causing horror; terrible; shocking.As a noun horrible is
a thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.abhorrent
English
(Webster 1913)Adjective
(en adjective)Usage notes
* Nouns to which abhorrent is often applied: behavior, act, crime, practice, thing. * (opposed) abhorrent'' is typically folled by ''from . * (contrary) abhorrent'' is followed by ''to .External links
* * *References
horrible
English
Noun
(en noun)- Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles !
- A lot of the possible horribles conjured up by the people objecting to this convention ignore the plain language of this treaty.
- The pot had previously simmered skate wings, cods' heads, whales, pigs' hearts and a long litany of other horribles .
CNN interview, January 21, 2000:
- I'm trying to convince him that the criminal behavior that's going on at the White House has to end. And I give him one horrible after the next. I just keep raising them. He sort of swats them away.
- Many scholars have demonstrated these horribles and contemplated significant limitations on class actions.