Other forms: abhorred, abhors, abhorring
To abhor is to hate something deeply. Abhor violence, I abhor it, abhorred by everybody.
It is the strongest verb of dislike in ordinary English and it is moral rather than personal — you abhor cruelty and dislike a person. It has no continuous form: nothing is being abhorred. Note that the Latin means to shrink from in horror, from horrere, to bristle, the same root as horror.
1verbabhorTo hate something deeply.
“I abhor cruelty to animals of any kind.”
abhor is a hating.
The Latin is to shudder away from, the same shudder that is in horror. To abhor is to hate a thing enough to step back from it.
hooks ontohorror
Latin abhorrere is ab plus horrere, to bristle or shudder. Horror and horrid come from the same shuddering.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰers-
Latin
abhorreō — shrink away from in horror
Middle French
abhorrer
Middle English
abhorren
English, today
abhor
First attested in 1449, from Middle English abhorren, borrowed from Middle French abhorrer, from Latin abhorreō (“shrink away from in horror”), from ab + horreō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA