Word
Of
The
Day
abhor
abhor \ub-HOR\
verb
: to regard with extreme
repugnance : to feel hatred or
loathing for
: loathe
Examples:
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.