Horrid vs Macabre - What's the difference?
horrid | macabre | Related terms |
(archaic) bristling, rough, rugged
causing horror or dread
offensive, disagreeable, abominable, execrable
Representing or personifying death.
* 1941 , George C. Booth, Mexico's School-made Society , page 106
Obsessed with death or the gruesome.
* 1993 , Theodore Ziolkowski, "Wagner's Parsifal'' between Mystery and Mummery", ''in'' Werner Sollors (ed.), ''The Return of Thematic Criticism , pages 274-275
Ghastly, shocking, terrifying.
* 1927 [1938], , Introduction
Horrid is a related term of macabre.
As adjectives the difference between horrid and macabre
is that horrid is (archaic) bristling, rough, rugged while macabre is representing or personifying death.horrid
English
Adjective
(en-adj)- His haughtie Helmet. horrid all with gold,//Both glorious brightnesse and great terror bredd. - , The Faerie Queen , I-vii-31
- Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn. -
- Ye grots and caverns shagg's with horrid thorn! - , Eloisa to Abelard , I-20
- Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood,//that we the horrider may seem to those//Which chance to find us. - Shakespeare, Cymbeline , IV-ii
- I myself will be//The priest, and boldly do those horrid rites//You shake to think on. - , Sea Voyage , V-iv
- Not in the legions Of horrid hell. - Shakespeare, Macbeth , IV-iii
- What say you then to fair Sir Percivale,//And of the horrid foulness that he wrought? - , Merlin and Vivien
- 1668' My Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the constable by the heels to answer it next Sessions: which is a '''horrid shame. - , ''Diary , October 23
- About the middle of November we began to work on our Ship's bottom, which we found very much eaten with the Worm: For this is a horrid place for Worms. - , Voyages , I-362
- Already I your tears survey,//Already hear the horrid things they say. - , The Rape of the Lock , IV-108
Usage notes
* "Horrid" and "horrible" originally had different meanings, but have become almost synonymous over the years.Synonyms
* abominable * alarming * appalling * awful * dire * dreadful * frightful * harrowing * hideous * horrible * revolting * shocking * terrificReferences
* *macabre
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- There are four fundamental figures. One is a man measuring and comparing his world In front of him is a macabre figure, a cadaver ready to be dissected. This symbolizes man serving mankind. The third figure is the scientist, the man who makes use of the information gathered in the first two fields of mensurable science.
- Indeed, in the 1854 draft of Tristan he planned to have Parzival visit the dying knight, and both operas display the same macabre obsession with bloody gore and festering wounds.
- The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.
