Havoc vs Horrible - What's the difference?
havoc | horrible |
widespread devastation, destruction
* Bible, Acts viii. 3
* Addison
:* {{quote-book
, year=1918
, year_published=2008
, edition=HTML
, editor=
, author=Edgar Rice Burroughs
, title=The People that Time Forgot
, chapter=
mayhem
To pillage.
* 1599 , , Henry V , Act I, Scene II:
To cause .
A cry in war as the signal for indiscriminate slaughter.
* Toone
* Shakespeare
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.}}
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As nouns the difference between havoc and horrible
is that havoc is widespread devastation, destruction while horrible is a thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.As a verb havoc
is to pillage.As an interjection havoc
is a cry in war as the signal for indiscriminate slaughter.As an adjective horrible is
causing horror; terrible; shocking.havoc
English
Alternative forms
* havock (e.g. in Milton)Noun
(en-noun)- As for Saul, he made havoc of the church.
- Ye gods, what havoc does ambition make / Among your works!
citation, genre= , publisher=The Gutenberg Project , isbn= , page= , passage=But when I had come to that part of the city which I judged to have contained the relics I sought I found havoc that had been wrought there even greater than elsewhere. }}
Usage notes
The noun havoc is most often used in the set phrase wreak havoc.Old Hungarian Goulash?, The Grammarphobia Blog, October 31, 2008
Derived terms
* play havoc, raise havoc, wreak havoc, cry havoc, break havocVerb
- To tear and havoc more than she can eat.
Usage notes
As with other verbs ending in vowel + -c, The gerund-participle is sometimes spelled havocing, and the preterite and past participle is sometimes spelled havoced; for citations using these spellings, see their respective entries. However, the spellings havocking and havocked are far more common. Compare panic, picnic.References
Interjection
(en interjection)- Do not cry havoc , where you should but hunt / With modest warrant.
- Cry "havoc", and let slip the dogs of war!
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.