Word of the Day

: March 5, 2021

abhor

verb ub-HOR

What It Means

: to regard with extreme repugnance : to feel hatred or loathing for : loathe

abhor in Context

Mariah is an animal rights activist who abhors any mistreatment of animals.

"The ultimate film geek, he worships the medium and abhors banality even as he reworks motifs from previous movies in his creative choices." — Sally Kline, The Washington Examiner (Washington, D.C.), 20 Aug. 2009

Did You Know?

Abhor implies strong feelings of repugnance, disgust, and aversion. This degree of distaste is seen in the word's history. In earlier use, abhor sometimes implied an actual shrinking away from something in horror or repugnance. Appropriately, the word's Latin source, the verb abhorrēre, comes from the prefix ab- ("from, away") and the verb horrēre ("to bristle, shiver, or shudder"). As you may have guessed, the Latin horrēre is also the source of the English words horror, horrify, and horrible.