Hor"rid (?), a. [L. horridus. See Horror, and cf. Ordure.] 1. Rough; rugged; bristling. [Archaic]

Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn.

2. Fitted to excite horror; dreadful; hideous; shocking; hence, very offensive.

Not in the legions
Of horrid hell.

The horrid things they say.

Syn. -- Frightful; hideous; alarming; shocking; dreadful; awful; terrific; horrible; abominable.

• (Archaic): bristling, rough, rugged
       His haughtie Helmet. horrid all with gold,//Both glorious brightnesse and great terror bredd. - Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, I-vii-31
       Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn. - John Dryden
       Ye grots and caverns shagg's with horrid thorn! - Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, I-20
  
• causing horror or dread
       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. - John Fletcher, 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? - Alfred Tennyson, Merlin and Vivien
  
• offensive, disagreeable, abominable, execrable
       1668 My Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the constable by the heels to answer it next Sessions: which is a horrid shame. - Samuel Pepys, 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. - William Dampier, Voyages, I-362
       Already I your tears survey,//Already hear the horrid things they say. - Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, IV-108