Adjective

(en-adj)

Dreadful; causing alarm and fear.

Formidable, powerful.

* 1883: (Robert Louis Stevenson), (Treasure Island)

and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog," and "real old salt," and such-like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea.

Intense; extreme in degree or extent.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=18 citation , passage=‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience,’ said Munday with granite seriousness. ‘Should he make a row with the police […]? Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?}}

Unpleasant; disagreeable.

* , chapter=12

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=To Edward […] he was terrible , nerve-inflaming, poisonously asphyxiating. He sat rocking himself in the late Mr. Churchill's swing chair, smoking and twaddling.}}

Very bad; lousy.

* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=April 26, author=Tasha Robinson, work=The Onion AV Club

, title= Film: Reviews: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits , passage=The openly ridiculous plot has The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) scheming to win the Pirate Of The Year competition, even though he’s a terrible pirate, far outclassed by rivals voiced by Jeremy Piven and Salma Hayek.}}

Adjective

(er)

Cheap and gaudy; showy.

* 1823 , , Quentin Durward , ch. 33:

The rest of his dress—a dress always sufficiently tawdry —was overcharged with lace, embroidery, and ornament of every kind, and the plume of feathers which he wore was so high, as if intended to sweep the roof of the hall.

* 1917 , , Calvary Alley , ch. 20:

It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry , from the festoons of paper roses on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns.

Unseemly, base, shameful.

* 1918 , , The Forty-Niners , ch. 1:

[T]he "greaser" was a dirty, idle, shiftless, treacherous, tawdry vagabond, dwelling in a disgracefully primitive house, and backward in every aspect of civilization.

* 1920 , , The Great Impersonation , ch. 16:

The woman's passion by his side seemed suddenly tawdry and unreal, the seeking of her lips for his something horrible.

* 2008 August 9, Clemente Lisi, " Lusty Lies of Don Juan John," New York Post (retrieved 16 Dec 2013):

After months of flat-out lying to the public, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally copped to having a sleazy extramarital fling. . . . The tawdry affair has dogged Edwards over the past few months.