/ˈtɛr.ɪ.fɪk/·adjective·1667, in English, meaning 'causing terror or great fear'·Established
Origin
Terrific comes from Latin terrificus (terrere + facere, to make frightening) and for two centuries meant exactly that — causing terror — before bleaching through intensifier use into a word of pure approval, its PIE root *tres- (to tremble) still embedded but inert.
Definition
Now meaning excellent or wonderful, originally 'causing terror', from Latin terrificus (terrere 'to frighten' + facere 'to make').
The Full Story
LatinClassical Latin, borrowed into English mid-17th centurywell-attested
English 'terrific' derives from Latin terrificus, a compound meaning 'causing terror' or 'frightening', formed from terrere ('to frighten, to cause to tremble') and facere ('to make, to do'). This Latinformationfollows a common adjectival pattern, parallel to horrificus ('horrifying') and magnificus ('magnificent'). Theword entered English around 1667 with its full
Did you know?
Terrific and terrible share thesameLatin root, terrere, yet only terrific fully ameliorated into a positive. Terrible still carries its negative charge in most contexts — though Yeats's 'terrible beauty' shows it wavering. The difference in fate has nothing to do with etymology and everything to do with the frequency and social register of each word's use as an intensifier: terrific was pressed into enthusiastic approval more often, and repetition erased
), terrible (via Latin terribilis), terrify (via terrificare), and also deter and deterrent, which come from Latin deterrere ('to frighten away from', de- + terrere). All of these trace back to the Proto-Indo-European root *tres- (also reconstructed as *teres-), meaning 'to tremble' or 'to be afraid'. This PIE root also yields cognates in other branches: Sanskrit trasati ('he trembles'), Greek treō ('I flee in fear'), and possibly Lithuanian trišėti ('to tremble'). The PIE ancestor *tres- reflects a primal, embodied fear response — the trembling of the body under threat. The dramatic semantic shift of 'terrific' to mean 'excellent' or 'wonderful' — its dominant modern sense — occurred chiefly in informal American English during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, completing its amelioration by the 1930s and 1940s. This is a well-documented case of intensifier bleaching combined with ironic inversion: words denoting extreme negative states are repurposed as superlatives of positive qualities. A parallel shift occurred with 'terrible': while it retains its negative core more strongly than 'terrific', phrases like 'a terrible beauty' (Yeats, 1916) and adverbial 'terribly good' show the same drift, where intensity overrides valence. Key roots: *tres- (Proto-Indo-European: "to tremble, to be afraid"), terrere (Latin: "to frighten, to cause to tremble"), facere (Latin: "to make, to do").